Pit Shadow

I’ve got to start this time around with hearty congratulations to Yamaha on their hat-trick of Suzuka 8-Hour wins. Terrific stuff guys, Alex Lowes and Michael VD Mark must be really chuffed, especially seeing as their season thus far in WSB hasn’t been quite as good as many (they included) expected it to be. Fingers crossed this win gives them (and Yamaha) impetus for the remaining races in WSB’s calendar.

But whenever Suzuka is running it takes me down memory lane, back to when this was about the most important motorcycle race in the world and we’d all be there every year. When the 8-Hour began, it quickly overhauled Daytona’s iconic race as the most important to teams, riders and most especially, manufacturers. Suzuka was the race that would see (when two-strokes were still all-important GP-wise) some incredible creations, bikes that would later provide the basis for specials such as Honda’s RC 30 & 45, Yamaha’s OW-01, YZF750 and R7, and many, many others.

And these were super trick bits of kit, built or stuffed with magnesium this and unobtainium that, bikes to truly drool over as they tried everything in their power to make four-strokes faster. Who can forget the stunning RVF machines Honda used to roll out? Bikes so special, that when they were shipped over to the UK for the Isle of Man TT races, the super-secret V4 engines were left in Japan and UK tuners were tasked with tuning RC 30 engines (with Honda’s help) to fit instead. They didn’t want anything or anyone to get any idea whatsoever of what could be inside, and the same went for all the other Japanese manufacturers, too.

And then there were those that raced it – in modern parlance that would mean Rossi, Marquez and every top GP racer, along with the top Superbike racers, all taking part. These days though, with titles in both series being so important, the second-rung guys usually get wheeled out, like Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro a couple of years back, and Lowes and VD Mark for 2017 with Jack Miller also given the opportunity to try his hand at the endurance thing.

What is a pity, along with the absent top riders, is that now most of the bikes are true production based Superbikes, rather than bespoke specials. We can no longer look to Suzuka for a glimpse into the future. But in many ways this is no bad thing, as this has helped boost the race. It did for a few years slip into a weird obscurity, though it’s been part of the World Endurance series (much to many full-time Endurance teams’ collective chagrin…) for a long time, yet the changes in modern life like social media, and TV channels willing to broadcast the entire 8-Hour event, has made it more relevant than ever before. That many Brits have been doing so well there in recent times is merely the icing on the cake for us as viewers or race fans.

But I want to see those specials back; those one-off genuine prototypes that make MotoGP machines look cheap. No, it won’t happen, but a Pit Shadow can dream!