Source: FIM.

The winners of the 2013 edition, the Musashi RT Harc-Pro Team have headed the qualification of this year’s Suzuka 8 hours.

The Honda squad leads the Monster Energy Yamaha Team with YSP and Team Green the official Kawasaki squad respectively. The Top 10 was dominated by the Japanese based teams with the single exception being the Honda Endurance Racing Team who took seventh best time with Sébastien Gimbert.

Recognised for his incredible performance last year, when he won on his debut at the Suzuka 8 hours riding for the Honda du Musashi RT Harc-Pro Team, Michael Van der Mark once again stunned his rivals with his best lap time of 2m07.839.

This deposed Katsuyuki Nakasuga riding for the Monster Energy Yamaha Team with YSP who is a specialist when it comes to flying laps at Suzuka, into second place at the end of qualifying.

There was also a good performance for the Kawasaki clan. Team Green achieved the third best time with Kasuki Watanabe at 2m08.370, which was in front of the Yoshimura Suzuki Shell Advance Team represented by Takuya Tsuda and Randy de Puniet who recorded laps of 2m08.752 and 2m08.800 respectively.

Other Japanese favourites are also placed in the top 10, these include Team Kagayama & Verity on Suzuki (2m08.947) and the FCC TSR Honda Team (2m09.062).

The best showing from the permanent squads was by the Honda Endurance Racing Team that placed seventh thanks to a lap of 2m09.104 by Sébastien Gimbert, who was closely followed by his team mates Julien da Costa and Freddy Foray. The English based official Honda Team will take their place in tomorrow’s Top 10 Shootout.

Superpole will re-order the top 10 places on the grid. This will include the Honda Suzuka Racing Team, the Legends of Yoshimura Suzuki Shell Advance Team with Nobuatsu Aoki who is very capable, and also Kevin Schwantz, and the Honda du Toho Racing Team with Moriwaki.

In 11th is the Yamaha France GMT 94 Michelin Team who just missed out on a place in the top 10, but the time posted by David Checa (2m09.610) and the strength of his crew bode well for the race.

The situation is more delicate for the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team, 13th, mainly due to problems with tyre grip and chassis settings. Three other permanent teams are placed together from 22nd position: Monster Energy Yamaha YART Team, Bolliger Team Switzerland (Kawasaki) and the Team R2CL (Suzuki).

The Team Flembbo Leader Team Kawasaki and the Team Motors Events April Moto Suzuki hold 37th and 38th positions in the rankings respectively. The Motobox Kremer by Shell Advance (Suzuki) Team is in 54th place out of the 70 teams who will start.

2014 FIM Endurance World Championship
Round two – Suzuka, Japan

Friday qualifying results: