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Factory GMT94 Yamaha Squad Leaving Endurance Racing

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In the FIM Endurance World Championship, the GMT94 Yamaha team is at the top of the heap. The defending champions, GMT94 Yamaha is only 10 points back in the current season from holding the FIM EWC trophy, with only one race remaining.

One round is all that the French team has, however, as the GMT94 Yamaha team will be calling it quits after this month’s Suzuka 8-Hours race. Needless to say, this is huge news for motorcycle endurance racing fans.

With three world titles under its belt and seventeen FIM EWC race victories on its tally, GMT94 Yamaha will leave the Endurance World Championship for happier hunting grounds in the World Supersport Championship.

As such, the French squad will leave a massive hole behind in EWC, as the GMT94 Yamaha squad tackles the remainder of the 2018 WorldSSP season with Corentin Perolari, before taking on the World Supersport Championship full-time in 2019.

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Bikes

Come Drool Over SERT’s All New Endurance Race Bike

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The winningest team in the FIM Endurance World Championship, the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team is the standard by which other endurance teams are measured…and that is a measuring stick that has seen a lot of use in recent seasons.

This is because the FIM EWC is a hot bed for competition right now, with a bevy of factory-backed teams capable of winning on any race weekend.

This has made it tough for SERT, and its riders Vincent Philippe, Etienne Masson, and Gregg Black, who currently sit sixth in the 2018 FIM Endurance World Championship standings.

For this season, SERT hopes that a new racing platform will make the difference, as the French team has finally jumped onboard with the current-generation Suzuki GSX-R1000.

Last year, SERT was still using the old GSX-R1000, despite the superbike being replaced with a new model for consumers in 2017.

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News

Kawasaki Announces Suzuka 8-Hours Factory Team with Jonathan Rea, Leon Haslam, & Kazuma Watanabe

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This year’s Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race is heating up with competition, as today Kawasaki announced that it will field a one-off factory squad for the race.

Riding the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10RR, the Kawasaki Team Green will consists of three riders: Jonathan Rea, Leon Haslam, and Kazuma Watanabe.

The move bodes well for the Suzuka 8-Hours, as the iconic Japanese race continues to see growing interest from the Japanese OEMs.

The last three races have seen Yamaha’s one-off factory team winning the race, and this year Honda announced that it would field an official factory team in response to Yamaha’s recent domination.

Not wanting to be left out in the cold, today marks Kawasaki’s response to the growing Suzuka challenge, and all three factories have a chance of winning one of Japan’s biggest bragging rights in the motorcycle industry.

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Racing

Honda Ups the Ante with Factory “HRC” Team for Suzuka

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The Japanese motorcycle manufacturers take the Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race very seriously, and none of the brands make a bigger deal out of the mid-summer event than Honda.

Big Red has won the Suzuka 8-Hours on 27 occasions, out of its 40 runnings, which is an impressive win ratio, but there is one issue: for the last three years in a row, the Yamaha Factory Racing Team has displaced Honda’s supported efforts on the top podium step – a feat no other team has ever achieved.

This is an insult that Honda can apparently no longer tolerate, and this week the Japanese manufacturer announced that at the 2018 Suzuka 8-Hours, a factory-backed “Team HRC” squad will compete in this iconic race.

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Bikes

Yamaha YZR-09 Endurance Concept by Oberdan Bezzi

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Yamaha really hit on something when it made the MT-07 and MT-09 motorcycles – two machines that still offer plenty of features and fun, while enjoying the benefit of not emptying the bank account.

Similarly, we have already seen that the Yamaha MT-07 makes a convincing track bike, especially when you change out the lower-spec components and add a full set of fairings.

Today, Oberdan Bezzi imagines a similar treatment for the Yamaha MT-09, with a slant toward endurance racing duties, which we find very appealing.

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MotoGP

Broc Parkes Will Replace Jonas Folger at Phillip Island

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Broc Parkes is to step in to replace the still ill Jonas Folger in the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team at Phillip Island. The Australian veteran is already part of the Yamaha family, riding for the manufacturer-backed YART World Endurance team. 

Parkes is an obvious choice, being both Australian and having previous MotoGP experience. Parkes previously rode for the PBM team in 2014, when he was teammates with Michael Laverty aboard Aprilia-based ART machines.

There is still no news on when Folger will make a return to MotoGP, as the team has not yet released any information on a diagnosis of his illness.

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Racing

Katanas in the Mist – Classic Endurance Racing at Spa

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If you are one of those motorcycle enthusiasts that longs for the days back when men were men, and bikes were carbureted, then vintage endurance racing at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps should be right up your alley.

Throw in a superb-looking Katana race bike, with Guy Martin at the helm, and well…you’ve got some YouTube gold right there, that’s what you’ve got.

Such is the case with Suzuki and its Team Classic Suzuki Racing squad, which came out to Belgium for the second round of the European Classic Endurance Championship, at the Spa Four-Hour endurance race.

There are so many iconic names at play here, it’s amazing that the event didn’t get more coverage. Thankfully, Suzuki made a video to help share the experience, which we think you will find highly enjoyable.

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Racing

Yamaha Wins Its Third-Straight Suzuka 8-Hours Race

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Vince Lombardi once said that he “firmly believes that any man’s finest hour is that moment when he has worked his heart out for a good cause and he lies exhausted on the field of battle. Victorious.”

The day is done, the battle is won, and for a third consecutive year, Yamaha lifted the Suzuka 8-Hours trophy.

It was a dominant performance by the #21 crew, and in the aftermath they sat and enjoyed their success. They weren’t exhausted, but for Alex Lowes, Michael van der Mark, and Katsuyuki Nakasuga this was the final moment of their 2017 in Suzuka, Japan.

Sitting in their paddock office, the trio of riders were relaxed, but the emotions of the day were starting to take hold.

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Racing

Saturday Summary at the Suzuka 8-Hours

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Yamaha claimed its third Top 10 Shootout victory on the bounce at Suzuka today, but the Yamaha Factory Team know that there is still plenty of work to do to claim victory at the Suzuka 8-Hours

There are no team sports quite like motorsport. Fans focus their attentions on the riders on track, but it truly is a team effort that drives performance.

At the Suzuka 8-Hours, teamwork becomes even more important, and how a trio of riders work together and gel can become the deciding factor between winning and losing.

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