Jack Miller’s Suzuka 8 Hour Yamaha livery revealed

The livery for the factory Yamaha Suzuka 8 Hours bike has been revealed, as the Iwata marque once again looks to the past for its inspiration.

Yamaha celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, which just last weekend at the Dutch MotoGP saw both the factory Monster Energy Yamaha team and the satellite Pramac Yamaha team running a livery inspired by the original Yamaha R7.

The livery for the Suzuka 8 Hours, revealed today (3 July 2025), takes the same inspiration, featuring the same red, white, and black paint on the #21 Yamaha Racing Team machine as the four YZR-M1s used at Assen on Sunday.

It’s not the first time in the recent past that Yamaha has ran a retro-inspired livery for the Suzuka 8 Hours. In 2019, it used a paint scheme based on the Tech21 livery from 1985, while 2018 was another year where the red and white colours were featured on the factory bike.

As well as the livery, Andrea Locatelli – who will be competing at the Suzuka 8 Hours for the first time this year – showed off a special edition helmet for the race which features iconography related to both Yamaha and the Suzuka Circuit.

Locatelli will be partnered by Pramac MotoGP rider Jack Miller, who has raced the 8 Hours once before, with Honda in 2018 for the HARC-PRO team, and by Katsuyuki Nakasuga, who has won the 8 Hours four times.

All four of Nakasuga’s wins came with Yamaha in its run of four successive victories between 2015–2018, and this year’s edition of the race will be the first to feature a one-off factory effort from Yamaha since 2019, with the YART Endurance World Championship team having taken on the role of Yamaha’s official Suzuka 8 Hours team since the race returned in 2022 following the Covid pandemic.