Strong performance at Suzuka: Jonas Folger came close to the top 10 with Suzuki

Jonas Folger finished his second appearance at the Suzuka 8 Hours with a strong eleventh place. Together with Sho Nishimura and EWC veteran Jeremy Guarnoni, the German narrowly missed out on a top-10 finish on the Suzuki GSX-R1000R of the S-Pulse Dream Racing Suzuki team.

Folger travelled to Japan with relatively little preparation. The 32-year-old only arrived in Suzuka on Monday evening, and testing for the historic endurance classic began as early as Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the trio of riders quickly found their feet and put in competitive performances right from the practice and qualifying sessions. In the race, however, the changeable weather – with persistent rain and several safety car periods – made life difficult for the riders.

Hardly any preparation time and difficult conditions

“My second time at Suzuka was great fun again, even though the conditions on Sunday were extremely challenging,” said Folger. “In the end, we finished eleventh, which I think is definitely cause for a small celebration with the team.”

Particularly given the lack of preparation, the former MotoGP rider regards the result as a success. “The top teams and their riders had previously had eight to ten days of testing under a wide variety of conditions. When you take that into account, our performance is quite remarkable. I think we can be satisfied with it.”

Folger is convinced that even more would have been possible had it not been for two unfortunate safety car periods. “It’s a shame that a safety car period during my first stint cost me a lot of time. I reckon I lost at least one and a half minutes because of it. Immediately afterwards, we were hit by another safety car period. Without those time losses, a place in the top 10 would have been very likely.”

Jonas Folger praised the teamwork at S-Pulse-Suzuki

The Bavarian was particularly pleased with the collaboration within the team. “We’ve really gelled into a strong team over these few days. Our driver line-up with Sho and Jeremy was really good. Everyone did a brilliant job both on and off the track and proved themselves to be true team players.”

Folger also specifically highlighted the work of the mechanics and the new team principal, Hideyuki Ogata. “The whole team was highly motivated and the pit crew did a first-class job. It was Hideyuki Ogata’s first time as team principal at the Suzuka 8 Hours. The team did an outstanding job.”

Nevertheless, Folger sees room for improvement in the future. Above all, additional test days ahead of the race weekend could significantly reduce the gap to the top teams. “If we could improve our pace by about a second through more preparation, we’d qualify further up the grid and have a better rhythm in the race. That would help us finish a few places higher in the end.”

Regardless of the result, the German looks back on his second outing at Suzuka with enthusiasm. “I had an incredible amount of fun again. The atmosphere was brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed Suzuka once more. I hope I’ll get the chance to race here again next year. But first of all, I’d like to thank the whole team, my team-mates and KTM for making this outing possible.”

The final standings of the 2026 Suzuka 8 Hours:

1. Honda HRC (Rea, Takahashi, Chantra), Honda CBR1000RR-R, 188 laps

2. Yamaha Factory Racing (Nakasuga, Miller, Locatelli), Yamaha R1, +1:34.280 minutes

3. BMW Endurance (Reiterberger, Odendaal, van der Mark), BMW M1000RR, +1:44.087

4. YART (Hanika, Fritz, Mercado), Yamaha R1, +3:44.444

5. AutoRace Ube Racing (Uramoto, Guintoli, Ponsson), BMW M1000RR, +3:46.113

6. SERT (Black, Linfoot, Atsumi), Suzuki GSX-R1000R, +2 laps

7. Suzuki CN Challenge (Tsuda, Mizuno, Masson), Suzuki GSX-R1000R, +2 laps

8. SDG Team HARC-PRO Honda (Kunii, Nagoe, Abe), Honda CBR1000RR-R, +3 laps

9. Honda Asia-Dream Racing (Atiratphuvapat, Pawi, Putra), Honda CBR1000RR-R, +4 laps

10. Team ATJ (Iwata, Suzuki, Kunimine), Suzuki GSX-R1000R, +4 laps