Yukio Kagayama | |
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Yukio Kagayama
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Nationality | Japanese |
Born |
Yokohama, Japan |
4 May 1974
Current team | Team KAGAYAMA Suzuki Asia |
Bike number | 71 |
Website | kagayama.com |
Yukio Kagayama | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nationality | Japanese | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Yukio Kagayama (born 4 May 1974 in Yokohama Japan) is a professional motorcycle road racer. He began motorcycle racing in 1990, spending many years in the All Japan Road Race Championship, finishing fourth in 2001. He contested four 250 cc World Championship races in 1997 and 1998, finishing top-8 in all four. In 2003 he raced in the British Superbike Championship for Rizla Suzuki, alongside double British champion John Reynolds, and had won three races when he crashed heavily at Cadwell Park.
He returned for the start of 2004, finishing 3rd in the championship despite not being at full fitness early in the season (a further crash caused a broken collarbone). He has also made various starts for Suzuki in Grand Prix racing, scoring several top 10 finishes in wildcard rides.
For 2005 he joined 1996 Superbike World Champion Troy Corser in the Alstare Suzuki team in the Superbike World Championship, and won races on the GSX-R1000, riding on largely unfamiliar circuits against some of the world's top riders. He finished 5th overall, and did enough to retain his ride for 2006. In the first race, he collided with Noriyuki Haga while battling for the lead on the final lap. He then had a run of poor results, before taking a third and a fourth at Misano, and then an impressive double win from the second row at Brno, nearly doubling his points total in one weekend. He came 7th overall in the series.