Endurance: Yamaha Factory racing maintains their control

The Yamaha Factory Racing squad of Pol Espargaro, Alex Lowes and Kats Nakasuga have maintained their control of this year’s Suzuka 8 Hour race, finishing qualifying well clear of their nearest rivals.

The trio ended the second day of action at the track 0.118 ahead of the MuSASHi HARC-PRO Honda squad, with four-time Japanese Superbike champion Nakasuga setting their fastest time to finish just ahead of Takumi Takahashi, just faster than his teammates Michael van der Mark and Nicky Hayden.

Team Green Kawasaki took third, with Leon Haslam the fastest of the squad. Yamaha Austria were an impressive fourth, first of the permanent Endurance World Championship teams by a long way, as Broc Parkes set their fastest time.

The Yoshimura Suzuki team of Josh Brookes, Takuya Tsuda and Nori Haga were fifth, with FCC TSR Honda sixth and a strong run to seventh for Toho Honda, first of the privateers with Brit Gino Rea onboard.

Yuki Kagayama and Ryuichi Kiyonari on the Kagayama Suzuki, Josh Water and Nobu Aoki on the Moto Map Suzuki, and Australians Mark Aitchison and Corey Turner rounded out the top ten.

The event’s unique qualifying format will now see the top ten teams each send their two fastest riders into tomorrow afternoon’s Superpole session, where the get the chance to complete one flying lap to decide their starting position for Sunday’s race.

Further back the field, Lincolnshire-based Honda Endurance Racing were 24^th, while TT regulars Gary Johnson on the Team Tras135 BMW and Horst Saiger on the Bollinger Kawasaki were 26^th and 31^st respectively.