Jonathan Rea<\/a> had replaced Dixon at Portimao and Assen, but this time it will be Yuki Kunii who gets his World Superbike debut with Honda.<\/p>\n\u201cFirst of all, I would like to wish Jake [Dixon] a speedy recovery and hope he can return as soon as possible,\u201d said Kunii, who won the 2024 Asia Road Racing Championship ASB1000 category and was third in the first All-Japan Superbike race of 2026 in Motegi.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn the meantime, I would like to thank Honda HRC for this opportunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year in Moto2, I could not achieve the results I wanted, so I returned to Japan this season to compete in the All-Japan Road Racing Championship with the CBR1000RR-R. I\u2019ve already scored a podium, which has helped me regain confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThen Mori-san [Yuji Mori, Honda HRC team manager] called me about this opportunity. I\u2019m very happy because experiences like this help me grow as a rider, so I want to make the most of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel any pressure; I will try to understand the bike as fast as possible, because of course the bike is quite different to the one I use in Japan, and then I just want to enjoy the weekend, gain experience and do my best on track.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the Balaton circuit because I rode here last year, so that will help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s a pleasure to share the garage with Somkiat, too, we\u2019ve known each other for many years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe first met in the Asia Talent Cup back in 2016, when he won the championship. Then we were team-mates for three years in the Spanish Championship, and again later, for two years, me in Moto3 and him in Moto2. So, it\u2019s nice for us to be together again as team-mates here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Honda HRC rider Somkiat Chantra will get his first laps of Balaton Park under his belt this weekend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,9400,806,805,803,804,16242,85],"class_list":["post-641091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-honda-hrc","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-somkiat-chantra","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}