2013 Suzuki Gsx-r600l3 on 2040-motos

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Suzuka Eight Hour capers

Chatting to TT legend John McGuiness recently about his first Suzuka Eight Hour experience got me thinking of a few capers the boys and me managed a few years back at what is still Japan's most important race of the season. It is a unique event that starts at 11am and finishes at 7pm making  it a pukka endurance race as the last hour is run with headlights on in the dark. It is essentially an eight hour sprint that showcases the trickest endurance machinery and manufacturer’s sales can be affected the following year depending on who wins or loses.

Archive: Yoshimura Hayabusa X1R

Millennium Falcon For a couple of years there’ve been rumors suggesting there’s a new Hayabusa on the way, and with that old warhorse currently MIA from Suzuki’s list of returning 2021 models, the buzz has grown a bit louder that Suzuki’s fixing to spring a new World’s Fastest Production Motorcycle on the world. This time we’ll be a bit less unsuspecting than we were in 1999, and this time, it won’t be so easy a feat for Suzuki to pull off, given the existence of the Kawasaki H2 Carbon, which made an honest 206-rear-wheel horsepower on our dyno last November. Whether the new ’Busa is fact or fiction, it probably won’t be the earth-shattering experience the original 1999 GSX-R1300 was, a motorcycle that had no peer or precedent when it came to bouncing off its 186-mph speed governor.

Rainy BSB tests are nothing new

THE combination of bad weather in the UK and a European testing ban means that most BSB teams will now start the season with very little track time. This sounds like a disaster for the top teams but history has proved this isn’t necessarily true and it sometimes doesn’t matter how much pre season preparation has taken place.  Back in 2002 Sean Emmett won on the IFC Ducati at the opening Silverstone round after first riding it in unofficial practice the same weekend. Steve Hislop took the other win on Pauls Bird’s well sorted Ducati. More recently in 2009, Leon Camier took an untested new model R1 Yamaha to victory at the Brands Hatch opener after GSE took delivery of the bike just the week before. Sylvain Guintoli won the other race on a well developed, well tested Crescent Suzuki. You could argue if no one has had testing then it is a level playing field but you have to feel for riders moving up to the superbike class in the world’s toughest national series.  Tyco Suzuki’s PJ Jacobson is one such rider but having spent some time with him over the past few weeks he seems to be taking it all in his stride. It may be the confidence of youth or maybe the fact he has won in every other class he has entered in his short BSB career, but I suspect he fancies at least standing on the Superbike podium at Brands (He also does a bit of ice racing which is not dissimilar to the this year’s UK testing).  The testing ban was implemented with all the best cost cutting intentions and if it had been any other year in the past decade all would be well. The teams may be feeling frustrated but the fans should be excited. With so many unknowns, the 2013 BSB opener at Brands Hatch could be the best ever!