2022 Suzuka 8 hours
Kawasaki has confirmed that it will officially participate in the 2022 Suzuka 8 Hours event. As the defending champions, a factory-wide show is being carried out after two years when the event was not held, due to the worldwide Covid pandemic.
This year’s official KRT entry will feature the riding talents of three proven Suzuka 8 Hours winners, Jonathan Rea and Alex Lowes from the WorldSBK KRT team, and Leon Haslam from the BSB championship.
KRT engineers and mechanics will support battle-ready Kawasaki Japan engineers and technicians to once again win the world’s most challenging motorcycle racing.
Guim Rodam – Team Manager KRT
“We are very proud to support this race and Kawasaki has asked us to fully support this 8 Hour operation of Suzuka, similar to what we did in 2019 when we supported Engineers Team Green and KHI. . We’re going to take it a step further and get the team’s Superbikes there at 100% trying to get the win back. We’ll see how we perform in the next test and take our best steps. It will be a combination of KRT WorldSBK staff and Japanese engineers.
“They have a good experience of 8 Hours and will assist us in many areas. This is a very important race for Japan as a country, and the market in Japan, and we are proud to be here to support it. But we feel that for fans around the world, the 8-hour race is also a very iconic race. For KRT and Kawasaki, this is a very important event as it showcases the spirit of sportsmanship in Japan. I know Kawasaki is willing to do a good job there, trying to compete with other manufacturers and perform well. In the end, it was like a big show, a big party of motorcyclists in Japan. Kawasaki is very committed to this activity. We will try to do our best there and bring the trophy back to Kawasaki again. ”
As well as being an important stand-alone event, the Suzuka 8 Hours is also a full round of the FIM Endurance World Championship – EWC.
The official Kawasaki 2022 racing team features two riders who shared the victory in the most recent Suzuka 8 Hours in 2019 – Rea and Haslam. In total, Rea has two previous Suzuka 8 Hours wins, while Lowes and Haslam have three each.
Kawasaki has won the previous two races of the 8 Hours, the first back in 1993 and most recently in the 2019 race.
Jonathan Rea
“I am very excited to be back in Japan. It is understandable that Kawasaki has always had such a great support. We won the race 3 years ago. Understandably Kawasaki is keen to defend the title and especially to continue the positive show WorldSBK is bringing to current Kawasaki while extending that positivity to 8 o’clock and Japan. Due to Covid, we were unable to return until now. I’ve always felt really grateful for the Japanese fans. The atmosphere is amazing and I really look forward to going back. I think Suzuka’s goal is to win. We’ve won there before and this season, I feel, with Alex and Leon on the team, we have a lot of experience with the Ninja ZX-10RR. I’m really excited to go back and see what we can do. We’re going with a lot of effort, lots of testing, serious events with strong riders and a much more experienced team. I feel like the least we can do is compete for the podium, but of course in Endurance anything can go right, things can go wrong. We have to be very calm, mature and try our best, step by step. ”
Alex Lowes
“It’s a race where I’ve had some success in the past. I’m really happy to be back there with Kawasaki for the first time. To be paired with Jonathan, who won last time he was there, was amazing. Obviously I’m a good friend to Leon while away from the track so it would be nice to be on the team with him. I share the garage with Johnny every weekend and he’s clearly the defending champion in Suzuka because we missed a couple of years. I’ve won the event three times so I think we have a pretty good team, a strong team and I’m looking forward to seeing how we fit together. Given the test schedule Kawasaki has drawn up, we know how focused they are on this race. When the race gets back on the calendar in 2022, they want to win and we’ll do our best to get another win. Let’s see if we can achieve our goal.”
Leon Haslam
“For me, going back to the Suzuka 8 Hours was amazing. I had a lot of success there and won it three times. Johnny and I won it back in 2019, the last time it ran, so to go back in 2022, I really have high expectations. To be back with Johnny and also Alex, who was our main rival in 2019 – I think we have the dream team. I’m super excited and can’t wait to get started. The goal for 2022 at Suzuka is clearly to win and win in a row for Kawasaki.”
The 43rd edition of the Suzuka 8-Hour, arguably the most important singles racing event in the Japanese motor sport calendar, will take place from August 5-7, 2022.
