When a rider wins by more than 30 seconds, it's usually a story of dominance. But when a rider wins by thirty seconds after an 8 hour, 217 lap race, it tells a slightly different story. The FCC TSR Honda Team pulled out a fantastic win over the Yoshimura Suzuki team, in one of the closest Suzuka 8 Hours in history.
The Yoshimura team of Yukio Kagayama, Josh Waters and Nobuatsu Aoki, had claimed the pole position earlier in the weekend, and after a crashe by FCC TSR Honda on Sunday, it looked like the Suzuki GSX-1000 would run away with the victory.
But the FCC TSR Honda team of Ryuichi Kiyonari, Kousuke Akiyoshi and Shinichi, were able to pull it together to give Honda another Suzuka 8 Hour victory. Honda has now won 24 Suzuka 8 Hour races.
"After my crash at the beginning of the race I felt obliged to do my best to get the victory for my team," Kiyonari said.
The final spot on the podium was taken by another Honda team. The Musashi RT Harc-Pro claimed third during the 2011 Suzuka 8 Hours ahead of the BMW and Kawasaki teams.
Suzuka 8 Hours Results
- FCC TSR Honda (Akiyoshi, Shinichi, Kiyonari) Honda
- Yoshimura Suzuki Racing (Kagayama, Waters, Aoki) Suzuki
- Musashi RT HARC-PRO (Takahashi, Tamada, Okada) Honda
- BMW Motorrad France 99 (Gimbert, Nigon, Cudlin) BMW
- EVA RT Test Type-01 Trickstar FRTR (Deguchi, Terizawa, Takeichi) Kawasaki
- Crown Keibihosyou Racing (Hamaguchi, Kitaguchi, Watanabe) Honda
- Yamaha Racing France GMT94 Ipone (Checa, Lagrive, Foray) Yamaha
- Tehru-Honeybee Racing (Iwata, Sekiguchi, Noda) Honda
- Suzuki Endurance Racing Team (Phillipe, Delhalle, Sakai) Suzuki
- Toho Racing Hiroshima Desmo (Yamaguchi, Kunikawa, Eguchi) Ducati
