Last weekend on the racetrack of Magny Cours took place the last race of the Endurance World Championship. It was the Bol D’Or, well known to all the Endurance enthusiasts and eventually again part of the Championship. The Bol d’Or is definitely important: a huge crowd comes every year at the racetrack to follow an amazing and thrilling race that offers every time great emotions. 24 hours of racing it’s something hard to believe, hard even to imagine, and this is the soul of the Bol d’Or. This year in order to add some thrill an unpredictable weather changed the conditions after the tests held just the previous days, and the event was amazing and breath-taking. The race started at 3pm, and until the following morning everything was proceeding more or less quiet, with two Pirelli bikes in second and third position following closely the Official Suzuki SERT team. The French team GMT94 was closing the gap from his third position, making great times lap after lap and approaching Yamaha Austria (YART). The teams were making sessions of basically 50 minutes, then stopping to refuel, change tyres, and swap from a rider to the other. Then came the rain, with riders moving from the Pirelli DIABLO SUPERBIKE, slick, to the WET and RAIN tyres, with a racetrack changing from wet to dry in a few moments and back again. The race of Yamaha GMT finished with only 3 hours to go, when they were occupying the second position and Sebastian Gimbert was riding really fast. An engine failure made him crash, and he started running pushing the bike to the garage. A huge effort if you have raced for 21 hours, but unfortunately useless as the bike couldn’t go back in the track. Yamaha Austria R1 then finished 2nd, and finished in the same position also in the World Championship. For this kind of races it’s important for the teams to have a good support from the tyre manufacturers: changing the temperatures from the day to the night and changing the weather conditions, it’s important not only to chose the right time for the changes, but also the right tyres. A team uses for this race more than 30 sets of tyres, and that’s why for Pirelli a dozen of people were involved at the race in France. The season ends with 7 teams using Pirelli tyres in the top 15 positions, proving once again the great performances offered by the Pirelli DIABLO SUPERBIKE tyres, both 16,5 and 17″, and how these tyres born in the SBK World Championship find their strength in their ability to suit different bikes and different riders, also with a set up like in the Endurance that needs to be a compromise between the different riders and thus not so fine tuned. Position/Number/Team/Nationality/Bike/Class/Total 1 1 Suzuki Castrol Team FRA Suzuki GSX-R1000 SBK 185 2 7 Yamaha Austria Racing Team AUT Yamaha YZF-R1 SBK 150 3 3 Yamaha Phase One Endurance GBR Yamaha YZF-R1 SBK 103 4 8 Bolliger Team Switzerland Kawasaki SUI Kawasaki ZX10R SBK 76 5 12 Team Fagersjo-el Suzuki SWE Suzuki GSX-R1000 SBK 68 6 55 National Motos Honda FRA Honda CBR1000RR SBK 50 7 666 Diablo 666 Bolliger Kawasaki GBR Kawasaki ZX10R SBK 40 8 21 RMT 21 Racing Honda GER Honda CBR1000RR SBK 36 9 6 Shell Endurance Academy Yamaha GBR Yamaha YZF-R1 SBK 33 10 100 Team Endurance Moto 45 Suzuki FRA Suzuki GSX-R1000 STK 29 11 44 Suzuki No Limits & R.T. Suzuki ITA Suzuki GSX-R1000 SBK 27 12 94 Yamaha GMT94 FRA Yamaha YZF-R1 SBK 22* 13 111 Team Kawasaki France FRA Kawasaki ZX10R SBK 22 14 99 Team Acropolis Zone Rouge Yamaha 99 BEL Yamaha YZF-R1 SBK 21 15 18 Suzuki Sapeurs Pompiers FRA Suzuki GSX-R1000 SPR 20