Seven Stars Honda 07 wins Suzuka 8 Hours - Honda Takes First Six Places...

The Suzuka 8 Hours round of the FIM World Endurance Championship has been won by the No.7 Seven Stars Honda of Kiyonari and Ukawa, with the No.11 Seven Stars Honda of Vermeulen and Fujiwara in second place and the HARC Pro Honda of Aoki and Yasuda third.

Although the No.7 bike was one of the first to pit for fuel, it had already built up a ten second lead at the end of the first hour. While the No.778 FCC TSR Honda, the Yoshimura Suzuki, the Masked Rider Honda, the Moriwaki Honda and the YSP Yamaha fought for position the No.7 Honda was able to increase its lead over the course of the second hour. When a thunderstorm brought heavy rain at the start of the third hour, the two Seven Stars Hondas made the most of their Michelin rain tyres to move clear of the rest of the field.

Suzuki 0123 Castrol had been up to third place before Kitagawa crashed, dropping the world championship leaders back down the standings. Yamaha Phase One also crashed and were forced to make their way back though the busy field, while their championship rivals Yamaha Austria were able to stay out of trouble and move into the top ten.

The Seven Stars Hondas continued to circulate relentlessly as their rivals either fell behind or crashed in an effort to maintain the pace once the track dried. Suzuki Castrol eventually closed to seventh place, Yamaha Austria finished ninth, Yamaha Phase One (Nowland, Cudlin, Young) 18th, Shell Endurance Academy (Rohtlaan, Hogan, Wylie) 28th, Suzuki No Limits & RT Motor Team (Ruozi, Giachino, Codeluppi) 41st and Aprilia Motociclismo Test Team (Aliverti, Veghini, de Nardi) 43rd. The two permanent Kawasaki teams, Bolliger and Diablo, both crashed out of the race.

Quotes:

Vincent Philippe, Suzuki 0123 Castrol, 7th place: "Comme si, comme ca. This race was good for our championship, for sure. It was a difficult, difficult race; two small crashes lost us ten minutes in the pit, so this was not so good."

Gwen Giabbani, Yamaha Austria, 9th place: "The race was pretty hard with the weather, but the first session was okay. After Igor went out the rain came and we ended up in tenth place; we were happy with that so we're pleased to finish in ninth. At the start of the week we didn't expect to do so well, and it's good for our championship. The future is good."

Russell Benney, Yamaha Phase One Endurance, 18th place: "I've come away from races many times with absolutely nothing before now, so I'm very pleased with our result today. We've got points on the board again, so we're off to Oschersleben to use that as a spring board for the rest of the championship."

Calvin Hogan, Shell Endurance Academy, 28th place: "The race has been good. We qualified low down but we always knew we'd make places up. We had a problem in the first stint with gear level travel but we sorted it out fairly quickly. My second stint was in the rain which made it very difficult but it came to our advantage in the end because both of our main rivals - Bolliger and Diablo - had crashes, so for the championship it's worked out really well. Very happy with the result."

Federico Aliverti, Aprilia Motociclismo Test Team, 43rd place: "For us this was a very hard race, very difficult."

Top Ten Finishers