Image: Supplied.

Experienced Australian Broc Parkes endured a difficult 2018 Coca-Cola Suzuka 8 Hours campaign in Japan on Sunday, taken out of the race by virtue of his teammate Takuya Fujita crashing the YART Yamaha YZF-R1.

Parkes and Marvin Fritz began the race with a stint each, which saw the team sitting in seventh position. Fujita unfortunately crashed on his first lap in front of a home crowd, caught out by fresh tyres and nerves in the Japanese classic.

Fujita was able to push it back to the pits and the team worked hard to rebuild it and re-join with Parkes back on-board in 55th place. The Australian was however unable to find a rhythm with the quickly-built machine and, missing the proper set up of their race bike, the team made the decision to withdraw for safety reasons.

“It was disappointing unfortunately that Takuya crashed,” Parkes recalled. “I think he had a lot of pressure for his home race. He crashed on the first flying lap, maybe a combination of new tyres, too much angle and opened the gas too much. From my side, my first stint I was a little bit slow from the start, but I didn’t know that they didn’t have tyre warmers on the wet tyres.

“Later in my ride I got my rhythm and was one of the fastest guys on track when the track was dry. In general we were in a good position after the second stint, in seventh, which is good for an 8 Hour. It’s unfortunate that Takuya crashed, otherwise I think we could have been in fourth or fifth position at the end if I look at the final times now.”

YART Yamaha’s only point-scoring finish in the five-round 2017-2018 Endurance World Championship season came in the 8 Hours of Slovakia Ring, in which the official Yamaha team was victorious earlier this year.