He won three World Superbike Championship races and finished on the podium on 20 further occasions.
Initial testing displays[1] and results suggested that they were not wrong.
At Monza the bike hurtled through the gravel at the Ascari Chicane before catching fire due to a burst fuel line, with Yanagawa nowhere near it.
He was 9th in 2001, crashing on lap 1 of his 100th WSBK race at Sugo but scoring two 3rds at Monza,[2] as Kawasaki gradually lost interest in the Superbike World Championship, focusing instead on developing a MotoGP bike for 2002.
[4] He continued in the All-Japan series, leading it in 2007 before losing out to Atsushi Watanabe, and also entered for a one-off MotoGP round at Motegi in 2007.