http://thebp.site/87100
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| This shot is the wraparound front and back cover image from a special edition of the book that I had printed for a few clients. One of the most enjoyable things about detailed photographs is that they tell a rich and complex tale on their own. This is the Team R2CL Suzuki GSX-R1000 with Sebastien Suchet aboard. A permanent but lesser-funded team in EWC competition, its GSX-R1000 is not really competitive with the front-line Suzukis of Suzuki Endurance Racing Team and wasn't even in the horsepower ballpark with the Yoshimura and Team Kagayama GSX-R1000s at Suzuka. Team R2CL claims only 180 horses for the machine, which it lists as a 2013 model. The shot shows the less-expensive, last-generation Ohlins forks clearly, and what appears to be the backyard light string used to generate the illuminated "2" on the tail section. My favorite detail in this shot involves Suchet's leathers. Suchet was racing a Yamaha YZF-R1 in the Superstock World Championship in 2016, so he couldn't use the leathers from that team on the Suzuki. Team R2CL couldn't afford to get him new leathers for the 8 Hours. So he pulled out a set of leathers from last year, when he raced a Kawasaki ZX-10R in World Superstock. Tape was slapped over the "Kawasaki" nomenclature. But hours of the heat, humidity and speed of racing at Suzuka weakened the adhesive. Look just above Suchet's bum and you see the tape peeling away, revealing the letters "asaki." Low-budget, perhaps. But the team ran a quick, steady race, avoided mistakes and beat a lot of the big-name permanent EWC teams in the 8 Hours. |
