Yamaha's first Suzuka 8 Hour win since 1996

The Yamaha Factory Racing Team has won the 38th running of the Suzuka 8 Hour world endurance race in Japan, with Japan's Katsuyuki Nakasuga joined by MotoGP riders Bradley Smith and Pol Espargarò to take home the first winner's trophy for the company since 1996.

It was also the first win for all three riders — Smith and Espargarò ion their first attempt. The trio dominated the race from early in the second hour, not long after Australia's returning superstar Casey Stoner spectacularly crashed out of the lead on the Musashi RT HARC-PRO Honda, breaking his right shoulder and left ankle in the process.

The only real hiccup for Yamaha was a 30-second stop and go penalty for Espargaro passing under a yellow flag, but the team immediately regrouped and completed the epic endurance race over one-minute ahead of F.C.C TSR Honda featuring Australia's Josh Hook, Moto2 rider Dominique Aegerter and world supersport rider Kyle Smith.
"I'm so happy. It was an unbelievable race," said Espargaro. "I have to say sorry to my teammates because I made a mistake during the race. We had a stop and go penalty and we lost more than one minute. My teammates were impressive, they were so fast. I gave 200 percent when I went out on the bike to recover this gap that we lost and we did.

"I'm proud of Nakasuga-san and Bradley. This weekend was so good for us. I'm happy because I found two great friends, and we got the 8 hours Suzuka race victory."

Third overall was Team Kagayama (Yukio Kagayama, Ryuichi Kiyonari and Noriyuki Haga), while Australia's Josh Waters was fifth on the Yoshimura Suzuki he shared with early leader Alex Lowes and Takuya Tsuda.

Meanwhile, it was a bruising return to racing for Stoner, who had just taken over the Musashi RT HARC-PRO from Takumi Takahashi and was in the lead when he went down hard after his throttle stuck—a motorcycle racer's worst nightmare.
Honda later confirmed that the throttle was 26 degrees open before the crash, and an investigation will now be launched on why it occurred.

But it was too late for Stoner, who now heads back to Australia to recuperate. Musashi was chasing its third successive win in the event, with Michael van der Mark the other rider.

“I am really disappointed that the Suzuka 8 hour has ended like this," said Stoner,. "We have done a lot of work over the last few weeks to get accustomed to the bike and the track and work towards a setting that made all of us quite comfortable.

"We really felt that the race and everything had gone as we planned so far, we were very relaxed and comfortable and making sure we saved the tyres and the fuel to stretch the stint as long as we could. Unfortunately, we experienced some mechanical trouble as I was going through the corner leading up to the hairpin.

"I did not have enough time to engage the clutch and I came in with too much speed, I picked the bike up to try to slow down more but I was heading towards the wall so I decided to lay it over and hit the barrier but unfortunately, they were a lot harder than they looked and we came out of it with a broken bone in the ankle and broken scapular.

"I want to say thanks to my team mates Michael van der Mark and Takumi Takahashi – they have done a fantastic job over these weeks and this weekend especially. I am very sorry that we could not achieve the strong result I believe we could have.”