You won't see Yamaha's factory YZF-R1s at the Bel-Ray 6 Hour despite the FXSBK being reduced to a single round.

The Yamaha Racing Team won’t put forward a last minute entry into next month’s Bel-Ray 6 Hour, despite team manager John Redding admitting that it’s an event that highly interests the Queensland-based outfit.

With the opening two rounds of the Australasian FX Superbike Championship yesterday cancelled by series organisers, the 3-5 December date of The 6 Hour at Phillip Island in Victoria has been opened up for YRT to attend, however team manager John Redding told MotoOnline.com.au that it’s just not possible.

“If we had known a little bit earlier then we would have seriously considered putting together a team to do The 6 Hour, but two weeks to set up for an endurance event that we are not geared to do is just not enough time,” Redding commented this afternoon.

“Unfortunately we aren’t able to attend either events now that the Formula Xtreme rounds have been cancelled.”

Redding revealed that it was a difficult decision for Yamaha to select the FXSBK Championship over The 6 Hour since the team and the event share the same major sponsor in Bel-Ray, however the team had already committed to the FX summer series at the time.

“We planned for it and budgeted for it [the FXSBK summer series], and even went through a bit of heartache too because with The 6 Hour being sponsored by our major sponsor Bel-Ray, when The 6 Hour was initially proposed we found it clashed with an event that we had already committed to,” Redding added.

“We certainly had to do some soul searching and entered discussions with both Yamaha and Bel-Ray to ensure that everyone was on the same page.”

YRT recently clinched both the FX1000 and FX600 titles in the winter-run Australian Formula Xtreme Championship [AFXC] with Kevin Curtain and Rick Olson respectively alongside Pat Medcalf.

The team has added 2008 Australian Superbike Champion Glenn Allerton to its roster for the FXSBK series, however that will be contested over just one round at Winton in Northern Victoria on 18 December.

Bel-Ray 6 Hour event promoter James Spence from Circuit Breakers says that having a factory Yamaha in the field would have been a great boost for the Australian Endurance Championship event.

“It would have been great to have YRT involved with a team supported by Bel-Ray, especially since last year we had 13 R1s in the field and this year there aren’t any of the current models,” Spence commented.

“Hopefully even if the official team isn’t on the grid, Yamaha might even be able to get behind a team such as Cru Halliday and Aaron Gobert – two riders who would also be great for the event – to help get them in the race. I believe they would do exceptionally well.”

Headlining The 6 Hour will be the defending champion Demolition Plus GAS Honda Racing team of Wayne Maxwell and Josh Brookes, plus Team Suzuki’s Superbike entry of Josh Waters and Shawn Giles. Another top contender for overall honours will be the Racers Edge Performance Suzuki team of Scott Charlton and IoM TT legend Cameron Donald.

In the Supersport ranks, the pre-race favourites will be Team Suzuki runners Troy Herfoss and Brodie Waters, while the AARK Racing/Peter Stevens Motorcycles Triumph of Christan Casella and Jed Metcher will also mark a strong line-up.