Out of Hours Doctor!
There was a time when the Suzuka 8 Hours was the most important race on the calendar for the Japanese factories.
This shows in the list of winners – many were the various factories’ golden boys of the time, which is why it reads like a roll-call of the great and the good, from both two-stroke and four-stroke racing: Wayne Gardner, Eddie Lawson, Mick Doohan, Wayne Rainey, Aaron Slight, Scott Russell, Fred Merkel, Kevin Magee, Colin Edwards… And, Valentino Rossi.
Interestingly, Rossi actually WANTED to race the 8 Hours, when previous Grand Prix legends would see it as an unwelcome distraction to the real aim of 500cc championship glory, especially with the fact that most 8 Hours were held in 35°C heat with 80% humidity. But Rossi – ever a historian of racing – loved the colour of the event and even badgered Aprilia race boss Jan Witteveen to build him an Aprilia RSV Mille to race there when he was racing in the 250cc class in GPS.
Come 2000 and Valentino was with Honda – and they had a new VTR1000 SP-1/W to race at Suzuka. During the build-up to the race,
Rossi had to go to Japan for the Suzuka tests twice – but gelled with the four-stroke V-twin Honda immediately.
“You can ride the superbike 100% all the time,” he said. “And while it feels slow compared to a 500, the lap-time is almost the same as the NSR. If you tried 100% all the time with the NSR, it’s like a different sport!” Rossi and team-mate Colin Edwards would lead the race with the Castrol Honda VTR, but would have a crash each and wouldn’t make the results…
Things were better for 2001. Firstly, Rossi had reinvented himself as ‘The Doctor’, claiming that he was thinking more about his racing than ever before. Also, Edwards had claimed the 2000 World Superbike title on his Castrol Honda, so surely he and Rossi could take the beautiful Cabin Honda VTR to victory?
Thankfully this time the 12-hour plane ride was worth it: Edwards and Rossi romped to victory and – the day after – Valentino even got to ride the prototype of the four-stroke RC211V, the V5 HRC race machine that he would use in 2002 to defend his first and the sport’s last two-stroke 500cc crown.