Suzuka 8 Hours: Jonathan Rea hammers again, Honda HRC halfway there

The 8 Hours continues in tough conditions: from the start they’ve been running on wet tires. At halfway, Honda HRC leads, driven by a Jonathan Rea who, despite retiring from the Superbike World Championship, is in imperious form today. But there’s still a long way to go.

The factory Honda team has so far used only two riders, with Takumi Takahashi alternating with the six-time world champion. Benched, barring an in-race strategy change, is Somkiat Chantra. A wise choice by HRC because, even though this is the third round of the Endurance World Championship, rider class is making the difference. With four hours to go, Honda holds about a 25-second lead over the BMW fielded by AutoRace Ube and about 45 seconds over the Yamaha Factory. Both BMW Motorrad and Yamaha YART are losing ground. HRC is making the difference even in the wet thanks to rider quality and pit stops: over three stops they’ve gained a full 14 seconds on AutoRace Ube. BMW, however, remains very close thanks to a superb stint by Naomichi Uramoto, who clawed back about ten seconds on Takahashi. But Sylvain Guintoli, the former Superbike world champion, at 44 no longer has the pace of his best days.

In the Yamaha camp, Andrea Locatelli, in his completed stint on heavy wet conditions, withstood Honda’s charge. Not so Katsuyuki Nakasuga, while Jack Miller also didn’t shine in the first part of the race. In his second stint of the day, however, the Australian woke up, setting the race’s fastest lap and attacking Guintoli to pry second place from him. The gap to Honda HRC is sizable; Yamaha at this point would need a safety car to erase the deficit and fully reopen the contest. Rider choices are also in play at BMW Motorrad and Yamaha YART: the German factory team started strongly with Michael van der Mark, but lost substantial ground with Markus Reiterberger and Steven Odendaal. YART Yamaha also lacks spearheads: Leandro Mercado, Karel Hanika, and Marvin Fritz are solid steady hands in “normal” endurance races, but at the 8 Hours level they’re not enough.

Christin Gamarino is sailing in eighth place with the factory Kawasaki (KWT Kaedear team). Alessandro Delbianco, third in qualifying and the best Yamaha rider on track, saw his chance to go home with a trophy vanish due to teammate Florian Marino’s early crash. In his first stint, the Italian Superbike champion was superb, at one point even the fastest on track, although Yamaha Marc VDS-KM99 lost ten laps and is languishing at the back. Gabriele Giannini with the Wojcik Honda is in the fight for the podium in the Superstock class. In the video below, the Roman rider’s thoughts just before the start. The same initial objective for Kevin Manfredi with the Rac41 Honda, but it already went up in smoke due to teammate Diego Poncet’s crash.

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