July 22nd, 2024.



Dunlop teams in both the Formula EWC and Superstock class showed resilience and determination through the heat and humidity of a gruelling edition of the Suzuka 8 Hours on Sunday.

For the first time Suzuka served as a points-paying round of the Dunlop Superstock Trophy, which encouraged European Superstock teams to travel to Japan with the championship battle in mind. A tyre support package jointly offered by Dunlop and series promoter Warner Bros Discovery Sports provided ten sets of tires to each Superstock team making the trip from Europe.

This also meant that the Superstock class was exclusively on Dunlop tyres, like in the European rounds of the championship, while the Formula EWC class fighting for the overall win was open tire competition. Japanese team TONE RT SYNCEDGE 4413 took the Superstock win in a BMW 1-2 ahead of full-season entrant Team Étoile.

In Formula EWC, BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team finished as the top-placed Dunlop team after an impressive weekend matching the performance of the top Japanese factory teams. Riders Markus Reiterberger, Ilya Mykhalchyk and Sylvain Guintoli’s qualifying performance led them through to Saturday’s Top 10 Trial, where they placed a respectable fourth, which set them up to take the holeshot when the race got underway at 11:30 local time on Sunday morning. They crossed the finish line fifth, earning valuable championship points.

Belgian team KM99 enjoyed success too with a consistent performance that allowed Randy de Puniet, Jeremy Guarnoni and Florian Marino to climb up to tenth. Honda privateer Tati Team Beringer Racing made the switch to Dunlop tyres for this race and finished 15th.

“Congratulations to our Dunlop supported teams in both classes for putting on a thrilling race in tough conditions where ambient temperatures were over 30ºC and track temperatures reaching higher than 50ºC,” praises David Auerbacher, International Race Event Leader, Dunlop Motorcycle Europe.

“The Dunlop team here combined expertise from our European and Japanese motorsport operations, to ensure each team had familiar track support engineers who could help them with strategy and extracting the maximum out of the tyres. We had good feedback from teams who were new to Dunlop in the Superstock class, and were pleased that some Formula EWC teams chose to switch to our tires for this race.”

Championship winners will be crowned following the Bol d’Or on 14-15 September. BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team is third, while KM99 is sixth but both will be looking to capitalise on those positions.

www.dunlopmotorcycle.co.uk