2025 Suzuka 8 Hours
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd on the 1st of July, 1955, with the manufacturer entering and winning the 3rd Mount Fuji ascent race in 1955 on the 125cc YA-1, their first-ever production bike, just ten days later.
To commemorate this milestone, 2025 will witness the return of the Yamaha Racing Team, the official name for the factory team during the 1990s, at the 46th edition of the Coca-Cola Suzuka 8 Hours Endurance Race, Round 3 of the 2025 FIM Endurance World Championship.
A full official Yamaha Factory Team last competed at the Suzuka 8 Hours in 2019 and has recorded a total of eight victories, with the latest being in 2018 when the team completed a run of four consecutive wins. Spearheading the team’s attack will be a rider who played an integral part in those four victories in a row, 12x All Japan Road Race JSB1000 Champion Katsuyuki Nakasuga.
The rest of the team will consist of two riders selected from Yamaha’s current crop of MotoGP and WorldSBK riders, with an announcement as to who those riders will be expected to follow shortly.
The team will race a specially liveried R1, adorned with the traditional #21 and featuring a striking red and white colour scheme, first used by Yamaha in the 1964 FIM Road Racing World Championship and inspired by the 1999 YZF-R7 limited edition raced at Suzuka that year.
The Yamaha Racing Team logo will also reflect this theme and is based on the one used by the factory team in the late 1990s, while the clothing worn by the team will also feature designs from that time.
Building on the connection to that era even more, the team will be managed by Wataru Yoshikawa, who rode the YZF-R7 at the 1999 Suzuka 8 Hours and was one of Yamaha’s leading riders in the 1990s, winning two All Japan Road Racing JSB1000 Championships while also competing in WorldSBK and MotoGP.
The Yamaha Racing Team will officially return to action at the 46th Coca-Cola Suzuka 8 Hours Endurance Race on Friday, the 1st of August, when practice and qualifying get underway, ahead of the traditional Top Ten Trial on Saturday and the race on Sunday.
