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2015.12.5
Team KAGAYAMA SUZUKI Asia qualifies 18th and 19th at the final round in Buriram
The final round of the 2015 Asia Road Racing Championship kicked off Thursday, December 3rd at Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Thailand. This is the second time the Championship came to this venue, with its first time being the fourth round held in August.
The team, with former Moto2 rider, #25 Rafid Topan Sucipto and World Superbike multi-winner #41 Noriyuki Haga, have showed progress since its debut at Sepang last March.
Three practice sessions took place Thursday and Friday. Although both riders improved their best lap every session, the gap between the leaders were difficult to reach. This continued into qualifying. In spite Topan lapping his best at 1’40.959, he qualified 18th, while Haga suffering from a severe chattering, lapped a 1’41.289, placing him on the 19th grid.
Both riders and the team will continue to find a solution for the set-up and will aim a higher position for the final two races of the season.
Race 1 will take place Saturday, December 5th and Race 2 on Sunday December 6th.
Rafid Topan Sucipto | #25
My lap time has improved since my first day, so I am happy about that. We progressed the base set-up Kagayama did for me, and the machine is smooth without any unneeded behavior. My starting grid is not where I wanted it to be, but I have a good feeling on the machine, so I will try to finish as high as possible for the race tomorrow.Noriyuki Haga | #41
The setup was not bad at start, but we tried different set-ups, which obviously is not working. I will be bringing the set-up back to day 1 and try to find a better solution during warm-up tomorrow. I hope I can find one by the race.Yukio Kagayama | General Manager
This is our second time this year at Buriram, and I asked Haga to try the setups we couldn’t try at our first outing here. However, it did not work. I am trying to be optimistic that, at least we now know the direction we shouldn’t be heading to. As for Topan, I am beside him this weekend. Qualifying wasn’t as good as I expected it would be, but how he improves his lap time, and the average is not that bad, so I expect him a better finish for the race tomorrow. Nevertheless, it’s our final race of the season, so I hope we can do a race that our supporters will like.
