The two free practice sessions of this weekend’s Suzuka 8 Hours in Japan was dominated by FCC TSR Honda. Kosuke Akiyoshi, Jonathan Rea and Yuki Takahashi are the only ones to have completed a lap under 2:09 for the first session. They conserved the best lap time for the second session.

They precede the Honda MuSashi RT Harc Pro of Ryuichi Kiyonari, Takumi Takahashi and Takaaki Nakagami and the Yoshimura Suzuki with Eneos de Daisaku Sakai, Nobuatsu Aoki and Yukio Kagayama.

Sakai and Aoki, winners of the Suzuka 300 last month, also won Suzuka 8 Hours in 2009.

The Suzuki Yoshimura team is the only rival of the Honda armada at Suzuka. As for the CBR1000RR, the most successful today in the free practice session were Keihin Kohara of Shinichi Itoh and Makoto Tamada and the Honda Dream RT Sakurai of Chojun Kameya and Wayne Maxwell.

As for the European teams, the Yamaha France GMT 94 Ipone of David Checa, Kenny Foray and Damian Cudlin are the most successful with a lap time in 2:12.431 seconds.

They lead the Yamaha Austria Racing Team of Igor Jerman, Steve Martin and Gwen Giabbani who did their best lap in 2:12.878. The Kawasaki Bolliger Switzerland finishes further down the grid with a lap time of 2:15.535.

The first qualifying sessions will begin tomorrow at 11:00am local time, with possible thunderstorms announced for Saturday and Sunday.