Suzuki Yamaha and Kawasaki Share Top Five Honours

The World Endurance Championship standings are currently headed by Suzuki Castrol's GSX-R1000 K5; a worthy testament to the experience of the team and the strength of the latest big GSX-R.

That there are also two Yamaha YZF-R1s in the top five is no surprise; Yamaha Austria and Yamaha Phase One Endurance are both hugely experienced teams campaigning meticulously prepared bikes.

The presence of two Kawasaki ZX10Rs in second and fourth places in the championship is certainly much more noteworthy.

Second placed Bolliger Team have used Kawasakis since their World Endurance debut in 1992, the year that Carl Fogarty and Terry Rymer took the World Endurance Championship for Kawasaki France and arguably the heyday for the smallest of the big four Japanese motorcycle manufacturers.

It's also perhaps significant that Terry Rymer is now co-manager of fourth placed Diablo 666 Bolliger, a team that switched from Suzuki at last year's launch of the ZX10R.

Kawasaki won the World Endurance title five times between 1991 and 1996. Since then Suzuki has taken the world championship five times, Honda twice and Yamaha once. So will 2005 mark a resurgence for Kawasaki? We know that Bolliger Team and Diablo 666 will be trying their hardest to make it so, but we can also be certain that Suzuki Castrol, Yamaha Austria, Yamaha Phase One and the rest of the permanent teams will be trying just as hard to claim the honour for themselves.

The next round of the FIM World Endurance Championship is the Suzuka 8 Hours, on the 31st of July.

May 31st 2005