You don’t often see the top brass of the biggest motorcyle company of the world don leathers, a helmet and hit a race track to personally compete in a race, but HRC Vice President Shuhei Nakamoto did just that yesterday at Motegi.

Nakamoto, HRC directors Seiki Ishii and Tomoaki Nagayama suited up alongside former GP riders Tady Okada and Shinichi Ito for the final and special four hour endurance race of the NSF100 HRC Trophy mini bike series.

86 teams and 420 riders took part in this one-off race, all on Honda mini-bikes and the HRC team completed 105 laps and finished as the press release says a ‘respectably’ 57th out of 80 finishers. We think that the HRC team got their butts kicked by younger and lighter kids. Anyone ever notice how heavy these guys are, including Okada, the official MotoGP RC212V test rider?

Quotes:

Shuhei Nakamoto, HRC Vice President: “

It was really good fun to take part in this race today with my colleagues and with our professional riders. We probably could have gone a little faster, but we were here simply to enjoy the race rather than go for glory! For us today was an important occasion to see how the NSF100 machine is used by the riders across a wide age range, and to see how we can develop these type of race events in future.”

Tady Okada, HRC Test Rider: “

I had a good start today and was able to come from behind and battle for second place. Since Yuki (Takahashi) was also participating, we had an exciting race for the last 10 laps. We do not have so much opportunity to race with other riders like this, so I had a lot of fun today!”

Shinichi Ito, former Grand Prix racer for Honda:

This was a little different from the racing that I normally do and I really enjoyed it. Some of the younger riders are very professional on the NSF100, and they also fit the machine’s small size very well, so they were fast in the corners and it was difficult to overtake them!”

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