During the last weekend, the famous Suzuka 8 Hours race ended the FIM World Endurance Championship season. While endurance fans were interested to see who would be the new World champions, the main attraction was the fight for the Suzuka 8 Hours overall win.
After four years in which we saw the Yamaha Factory Racing winning this race, this season it was time for another manufacturer to get the victory.
Starting from pole position, Yamaha Factory Racing (Michael van der Mark, Alex Lowes, and Katsuyuki Nakasuga) had the ambition to conquer a record fifth win in Suzuka. But on the early moments of the race, the Yamaha Factory lost the lead, and the race had a few race leaders during its 8 hours.
Without any problems during the race, the victory was decided by the three main favorites on the last 30 minutes: Yamaha Factory Racing, Kawasaki Racing Team (Jonathan Rea, Leon Haslam, and Toprak Razgatlioglu) and Red Bull Honda (Takumi Takahashi, Ryuichi Kiyonari, and Stefan Bradl).
With just 30 minutes to go, Kawasaki finally reached the lead with Jonathan Rea overtaking Takumi Takahashi. Twenty seconds behind them the Yamaha bike with Alex Lowes didn’t have a chance to fight for the win. But things changed a lot in the last five minutes!
Suzuki SERT engine blew up. The rider crossed the track from one side to the other leaving the surface with oil. Race Direction didn’t issue the order to track marshals to show red flags, so the race continued as normal.
On the last lap, and while cruising to what seemed an easy win, Jonathan Rea suffered a crash after going through the section of the track with oil. At that moment, 1m30s to the end of the 8 hours, Race Direction decided to give the order to show red flags ending the race.
In the first minutes after the end of the race, Race Direction declared Yamaha Factory Racing as the winners. Alex Lowes was giving it all and did overtake the Honda #33 before the end of the race. But Kawasaki Racing Team didn’t accept that decision and presented a protest.
After hearing what Kawasaki had to say, Race Direction decided to hand the win to the Kawasaki Racing Team. It was only the second time that Kawasaki won the Suzuka 8 Hours race. Yamaha Factory Racing moved down to second spot, and Red Bull Honda finished third.
But the race win wasn’t the only reason for Kawasaki to celebrate in Suzuka!
With Suzuki SERT retiring from the race, as mentioned before, the World Endurance Championship title goes to the Kawasaki SRC team of David Checa, Jérémy Guarnoni, and Erwin Nigon. It’s the first time that this team becomes the FIM WEC champions.
For next season there will be a few changes in the FIM World Endurance Championship. The main change is the addition of the Sepang circuit to the 2019/2010 calendar. The final and official calendar is yet to be announced.
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