YOSHIMURA 4TH IN JAPANESE SUPERBIKES
04 April 2005 - Suzuki Racing

Yoshimura''s Atsushi Watanabe raced the new GSX-R1000K5 Suzuki into fourth place at the opening round of the Japanese Superbike Championship at Mine Circuit yesterday.

Despite being hindered by poor weather during pre-season testing that set back development of the new race machine, Watanabe qualified on the third row of the grid and held seventh at the end of the opening lap.

In the first half of the race, the Suzuki rider was locked in an exciting battle with Takeshi Tsujimura (Honda), Katsuyuki Nakasuga (Yamaha) and Naoki Matsudo (Honda), but lost a little pace after choosing a different tyre compound.

But by mid-race distance he was holding a comfortable fourth position and moving closer to the leaders when the race was red-flagged due to rain and the results were calculated after 16 of 22 laps.

He said: ''Our GSX-R1000 was amazing today, especially as rain and snow held back our development of the machine in pre-season testing. We made some chassis changes and today I chose another tyre compound for the race, but I was going really well in the second half of the race and disappointed that rain caused it to be red-flagged. For the next round, I want to win.''

Team Manager Fujio Yoshimura added: ''Atsushi did a good job today and our bike is developing very well. We aim to develop more and more and plan to win the championship.''

Results: 1 Shin-ichi Itoh (Honda), 2 Akira Yanagawa (Kawasaki), 3 Takeshi Tsujimura (Honda), 4 Atsushi Watanabe (Yoshimura Suzuki), 5 Osamu Deguchi (Honda), 6 Katsuyuki Nakasuga (Yamaha), 7 Naoki Matsudo (Honda), 8 Yoshiyuki Sugai (Ducati), 9 Toshihiro Konno (Suzuki), 10 Takahiro Yagi (Yamaha).

www.suzuki-racing.com

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