By For almost fifty years, the Suzuka 8 Hours has presented defined, relentless challenges, aligning together extreme heat with gruelling endurance riding stints.
Previous event winners include 1980 Senior TT winner Graeme Crosby, nine times World Champion Valentino Rossi, five times World Champion Mick Doohan, Noriyuki Haga, Alex Barros.
BSB legend Ryuichi Kiyonari, World Superbike Champions Fred Merkel, Colin Edwards, Jonathan Rea, and Toprak Razgatlioglu.
This year’s edition included three times TT winner, Southern 100 Solo Champion, Armoy Road Races lap-record holder Davey Todd.
Todd competing for the Autorace Ube Racing Team on M1000RR BMW apparatus, won a pre-event testing battle with Ivo Lopes, to replace Hannes Soomer (absent through injury), join Loris Baz, Naomichi Uramoto within the Japanese squad.
Uramoto, Baz, Todd would go onto finish a more than respectable sixth, second best BMW team behind the works trio of Markus Reiterberger, Michael Van Der Mark, and Steven Odendaal.
Honda HRC team’s Takumi Takahashi, French Grand Prix winner Johann Zarco held off the main Yamaha team (Katsuyuki Nakasuga/Jack Miller/Andrea Locatelli) to retain the overall race title whilst the Honda Dream RT Sakurai Honda team featuring 2024 Senior TT runner- up Josh Brookes, were classified as 34th place finishers.
Photo credit: Michael Wincott
Words by Stevie Rial #dontletfearcontrolyou
