Yamaha rules again Brit Lowes leads Japanese factory team to victory
Brit star gives Yamaha fourth title on the bounce He blasts ‘dangerous’ Rea
The unstoppable Yamaha squad of Alex Lowes and Michael van der Mark made it four wins in a row at the Suzuka 8-Hour last weekend.
Despite being a man down after their Japanese team-mate Katsuyuki Nakasuga crashed in practice, the WSB duo came out on top in difficult conditions and with stronger-than-ever opposition desperate to knock them off their perch.
Starting the race in damp conditions, van der Mark got off the line cautiously, settling into third place while the track dried out. The Dutch rider was soon locked in a frenetic battle with Kawasaki’s WSB superstar Jonathan Rea. Rea and van der Mark were duffing each other up as if it were a 20-lap dash, before Alex Lowes and Leon Haslam took up the cudgels. Van der Mark told MCN that this year’s race was without doubt his hardest victory at the prestigious event. “It was one of my worst experiences ever. Starting the race in the rain, then getting used to a drying track was tough. Then the safety car came out. It used up so much energy, and it was all just a big mess. It looked like Rea could achieve the lap times a lot easier than I could and it just made it so physical. It was hard mentally because you could see the rain coming and the anticipation was almost worse.”
Lowes said that a mistake-free race was the secret to their success. Now a well-oiled machine after first taking the win in 2015 with Nakasuga and the MotoGP duo of Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro and then dominating since with their current line-up, he put the eventual victory down to experience.
“Kawasaki and Honda had a similar pace to us, but they both made mistakes and we didn’t. That’s how you win this race, by doing a solid job. It was definitely tougher with two riders, though, because we’re a really strong package as three and there was just a little bit missing without Nakasuga.”
Lowes was thrilled with the win but unhappy with rival Rea and accused the Kawasaki star of dangerous riding in the frantic early part of the race as he diced with van der Mark and Sylvain Guintoli.
“He’s the first person to criticise others for being dangerous, like he did with Tom Sykes at Brno. But if you compare Tom’s move on him at Brno with what he did to Sylvain today, his move was more dangerous. It’s strange; and I don’t know why he’d do that, because he’s so fast and he’s a great rider.”
‘Kawasaki and Honda had similar pace to us, but made mistakes’ ‘The WSB duo came out on top in difficult conditions’