Suzuka will continue to play an integral role in the ongoing success of the FIM Endurance World Championship with confirmation that the Japanese circuit’s iconic eight-hour event will feature on the 2024 EWC calendar.

Taking place from 19-21 July, the 45th Coca-Cola Suzuka 8 Hours Endurance Race will be one of the highlights of the 2024 EWC season and a spectacle not to be missed.

With a mid-morning start and early evening finish, the Suzuka 8 Hours might not be the longest race on the EWC calendar, but it’s regarded as one of the toughest. This is due to the highly-demanding nature of the figure-of-eight track layout and the hot and humid conditions that require the EWC stars to be at the peak of their physical powers.

Having run during the first weekend of August in 2023, the 2024 edition of the Suzuka 8 Hours will take place across the penultimate weekend of July to avoid a clash with the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.

Jean-Baptiste Ley, the EWC Series’ Director for promoter WBD Sports, said: “While the Suzuka 8 Hours is an event that attracts interest from around the world, it’s fundamentally a great celebration of all that is fantastic about the Japanese motorcycle industry, making it a very important round of the EWC and one of the championship’s many great assets. It’s also an event that attracts a huge and enthusiastic fan following, which helps to create a tremendous and unforgettable atmosphere each year. As well as acknowledging the continued participation of Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha in the EWC, the Suzuka 8 Hours is the home race for Webike, a key EWC partner, which means we are more than delighted to be extending our long-term alliance with venue operator and race organiser Honda Mobilityland Corporation.”

The Suzuka 8 Hours returned to the EWC calendar in 2022 having not taken place since 2019 due to the global health crisis. Following its triumph that year, Team HRC won again in 2023, 31 years after Shigeo Iijima and Shinji Hagiwara became the first Japanese winners when they won for Honda in 1982, a break of 20 years since Suzuka opened as a Honda test track.

Although it was billed as an eight-hour race, the onset of a typhoon meant there were only six hours of racing in 1982, a four-year gap since Americans Mike Baldwin and Wes Cooley won the inaugural Suzuka 8 Hours on 30 July 1978 riding a Yoshimura Racing Suzuki.

Other notable winners of the Suzuka 8 Hours include Wayne Rainey (1988), Eddie Lawson (1990) Mick Doohan (1991) and Valentino Rossi (2001).

The full 2024 FIM Endurance World Championship calendar with details of all the events being planned for the 2024 season will be revealed in due course.