Watanabe and Kagayama fastest in Suzuka practice.

Yoshimura Suzuki's Atsushi Watanabe set the fastest time in the opening free practice session for the Suzuka 8 Hours, round four of the World Endurance Championship in Japan.

The 27-year-old - teamed with Yukio Kagayama - lapped the twisty Suzuka Circuit under blue skies and windy conditions with a time of 2:10.888 mins. in a late afternoon timed practice session.

Watanabe's time placed him 0.315 seconds ahead of Shinichi Ito (Honda). Three-times 8 Hours champion Tohru Ukawa (Honda), who won the Suzuka 300K race with Hitoyatsu Izutsu in late-May, was third quickest on the day at 2:11.230 mins.

Yamaha's Shichi Nakatomi and Waturu Yoshikawa, second overall in the 2003 Suzuka 8 Hours, took fourth fastest at 2:11.615 mins.

The top five were rounded out by Suzuki's Keiichi Kitagawa and Katsuaki Fujiwara with a time of 2:12.196. Kitagawa and Fujiwara nearly won last year's race but a machine malfunction put them out of the race at the seven hour mark after leading for 73 consecutive laps.

The variety of machines at the top was complimented by a variety of tyre manufacturers. Dunlop earned bragging rights, followed by Bridgestone and then Michelin.

Fastest of the permanent teams was Suzuki Castrol of Phillipe, Four and Giles in 26th place with a time of 2:14.941. Costes, Gimbert and Checa for Yamaha GMT94 were just 0.842 seconds behind in 27th place and a real battle looks set to begin between these two teams during qualifying.

Teams racing at Suzuka are limited to a maximum of ten front and ten rear tyres for the timed qualifying sessions and the race. The permanent championship teams are all using three riders so they have been granted an allowance of an additional two pairs of tyres. But these can only be used by the third rider during qualifying. Finally, the teams who make it through to Superpole on Saturday will be allowed two more tyre pairs just for the special stage laps.

All of this means that teams must carefully manage their tyre use and strategy - they will not have enough tyres to use special "qualifiers", and there is very little scope for experimentation with different tyre compounds during qualifying; of the ten tyres available, at least eight or nine pairs will be needed for the race itself.

Only teams entered in the Superbike, Super Production and Stocksport classes will score World Endurance Championship points at Suzuka. Many of the local 'wildcard' entries are running in the Japanese Superbike class or one of the two Formula Xtreme classes which are not eligible for points.

Qualifying for Sunday's race and Saturday's single lap Special Stage takes place later today with each rider getting 30 minutes of track time in the morning and another 30 minutes in the afternoon.