YART Suffers Fall from 3rd, Finishes 7th

On August 7 2022, the 43rd "Coca-Cola" Suzuka 8 Hours Endurance Race was held at Suzuka Circuit in Mie Prefecture, Japan. In it, the Yamalube YART Yamaha EWC Official Team rode the first seven hours in 3rd position, but with one hour remaining suffered a fall. They were able to restart to complete 209 laps and finish 7th overall.

Having lined up in 3rd for the race, when the Le Mans style start was made Niccolo Canepa ran across the track but the YZF-R1 failed to start, costing the team several positions off the line and leaving Canepa in 22nd. He began working on recovering positions, and when the safety cars came on track soon after this brought the gap down even further.

The safety cars then pulled in, allowing Canepa to begin mounting his comeback from 17th. By lap 10 he had recovered to 10th, 7th by lap 11, and by lap 12 had made it all the way into 5th. On lap 13 he passed the F.C.C. TSR Honda France machine of Josh Hook, then did the same to Yoshimura SERT Motul's Gregg Black in the chicane to take over 3rd.

When Canepa returned to the team's pit box, he did so in 3rd place behind Team HRC's Takumi Takahashi and Kawasaki Racing Team Suzuka 8H's Leon Haslam, before switching with teammate Marvin Fritz. The positions remained unchanged as Fritz finished his stint and handed the YZF-R1 over to Karel Hanika. It was during Hanika's stint at 1:48 p.m. that a machine crashed in Degner Curve and caught fire, bringing the safety cars back out.

The two safety cars enter Suzuka Circuit from the first corner and from Degner Curve. In this case, Team HRC and Kawasaki Racing Team Suzuka 8H ended up in separate groups, with YART being in the same group as Kawasaki. This gave Team HRC around a half lap advantage at the front. When the safety cars pulled in at around 2:00 p.m., YART had a one minute forty second gap to Team HRC in the lead, and a five second gap to Kawasaki in 2nd.

From this point Team HRC went on to open a sizeable gap to run uncontested at the front, while YART battled with Kawasaki and Yoshimura for 2nd. Then, although Kawasaki's Jonathan Rea crashed at one point, he was able to quickly re-join the race, which afforded YART little advantage.

At slightly past 6:30 p.m., the YART and Akeno Speed Yamaha machines came together at Spoon Curve, resulting in a crash. Fritz was able to bring the R1 back to the team's pit box, but in the process lost many positions. The accident had brought out the safety cars once again however, which allowed YART to slot back into 7th after making repairs. Shortly after this a stop and go penalty was given to the team, making a podium finish firmly out of reach. In the end YART finished the race in 7th overall having completed 209 laps in total.

Finished 7th: Yamalube YART Yamaha EWC Official Team (209 laps)

Niccolò Canepa

"It's been amazing. I don't know why, but the bike didn't start at the beginning of the race. I enjoyed my first stint because I came back from 25th to 3rd and this I didn't expect honestly, I was really happy. At one point Kawasaki made a mistake and suddenly we were in 2nd place as well. Unfortunately our bike has higher consumption so we have to stop more, but even then we could make it safely into 3rd place. Unfortunately we were unlucky and we didn't finish how we deserved, but this is racing. In the final round of the season, we will try to do our best like always. We will get the pole position. This I already know. But this time for me, I don't care about the lap times, I really care about being on the top of the podium. I want to end the season with the team in a good mood."

Marvin Fritz

"We had a good race. We had a lead on SERT and being 2nd and 3rd, the podium was already sure. In my stint I had a good feeling and did some good lap times but then I slowed down and did some :09 and :10s and with 10 laps to go, into the Spoon Curve I wanted to pass one rider, but his handlebar touched the back of my seat and we both crashed. I feel horrible for the team because everyone deserved it so much. Our dream here was to be on the podium at Suzuka, and today was the our best possibility to achieve that, so I'm sorry for all the team. I think I have no words in this moment. The team worked amazing from the tests here, all the weekend here. We'd been super strong in the race, even as fast as the two factory teams in a few sessions, so this shows the potential of our teamwork, and for this I'm even more disappointed in myself. For the championship it looks difficult. The target is to win this race and finish our season with a win."

Karel Hanika

"Well, it went pretty good for 7 hours. It's a shame it's not the Suzuka 7 Hours! Really though, it's difficult to find the words to be honest. I'm really proud of the team, and the work that has been done this week overall. As an EWC team we were competitive against the 8 Hours factory teams and that was great. We fought with 6-time world champion Jonathan Rea, with Alex Lowes and with Leon Haslam, but Honda was very fast. It was difficult to follow them. I'm really sorry for Marvin, because sometimes in endurance these things happen. It's a disappointment for all the team, but we can be proud of the performance we showed during the race. The next round is the Bol d'Or which we didn't finish last year. From 1st position we had some engine trouble. Next time we want to finish the whole 24 hours. As riders we like the track a lot, and we are competitive for sure. Now winning the championship will be very difficult, but we can take it just as the next race and try to win, so we can end the season at a good level."

Mandy Kainz

"We can't be satisfied with this result. We were already dreaming of the podium. We had it all under control and all we had to do was bring the bike back and we could have finished 3rd. But finally, we gave away the position to our rivals. It was our mistake but this can happen. This is racing. It was really fantastic to be able to fight with the factory teams. When Kawasaki had a problem we were even in 2nd a few times and we were always in range of the podium. We had a small problem with the start but this we are used to. We came back very quickly. We were fast, we had great pace and we felt comfortable so it was really disappointing. To all Yamaha fans I want to say that we race for you and we'll never give up on our dream of a podium here. We'll be back."

Pos.	No.	Team	Machine	Laps
1	33	Team HRC	Honda	214
2	10	Kawasaki Racing Team Suzuka 8H	Kawasaki	213
3	1	Yoshimura SERT Motul	Suzuki	212
4	95	S-PULSE DREAM RACING・ITEC	Suzuki	210
5	104	TOHO Racing	Honda	210
6	72	Honda Dream RT SAKURAI HONDA	Honda	210
7	7	YART-YAMAHA OFFICIAL TEAM EWC	Yamaha	209
8	40	Team ATJ with JAPAN POST	Honda	208
9	50	TEAM KODAMA	Yamaha	208
10	5	F.C.C. TSR Honda France	Honda	208
16	806	NCXX RACING with RIDERS CLUB	Yamaha	202
27	74	AKENO SPEED・YAMAHA	Yamaha	188
32	71	Team MATSUNAGA KDC & YSP NAGOYAKITA	Yamaha	170
34	38	K's WORKS　RACING	Yamaha	165
DNF	70	OGURA CLUTCH ORC with RIDE IN	Yamaha	149
DNF	41	IRF with AZURLANE	Yamaha	144
DNF	51	T.MOTOKIDS TAKADA Iron Works NAC	Yamaha	89