SERT GSX-R STORMS TO LE MANS VICTORY!
Suzuki Endurance Racing Team has stormed to a dominating victory at the opening round of the 2015 Endurance World Championship, the 38th Le Mans 24-Hour, at Circuit Bugatti in France today.
Team riders Vincent Philippe, Anthony Delhalle and new member Etienne Masson overcame a high-speed slide-off by Delhalle just over an hour into the event, to take the lead after five hours and eventually cross the finish line seven laps ahead of nearest rivals and early race leaders SRC Kawasaki’s Gregory Leblanc, Matthieu Lagrive and Fabien Foret.
After qualifying fourth on the grid, SERT set a blistering and consistent pace throughout, taking 26 well-orchestrated pit-stops during 24-hours of close and intense racing between the 56 entered teams, completing a total of 833 laps.
Suzuki’s Junior Team LMS, which is run from the same SERT headquarters at Le Mans, also topped the Superstock podium with team riders Baptiste Guittet, Gregg Black and Roman Maitre claiming fourth overall against the EWC teams.
More, from a press release issued by Honda Racing:
Honda Racing retires form the 24h Motos race
After almost twenty hours racing and working hard, Honda Racing team had to retire from the 24h Motos in Le Mans. The team took the hard decision to retire because of elements found in the oil.
Endurance specialists Julien Da Costa, Sébastien Gimbert and Freddy Foray worked relentlessly with the team to get the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP to the finish line of the 24h Motos race in Le Mans. Unfortunately, at 10:40 Honda Racing had to announce its retirement from the race when elements were found in the oil – increasing the risk of engine breakdown on track.
However, Honda Racing qualified in third place on the grid of the 24h Motos race in Le Mans. Julien Da Costa started the race for the team and managed to take immediately second position. Then, a few minutes before the first pit stop, Honda Racing took the race lead.
The Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP was able to do very long runs and performed better than any other bike on track in terms of fuel consumption. The team consequently had to stop less for refuelling and was able to build a gap. During the first six hours of the race, Julien Da Costa, Sébastien Gimbert and Freddy Foray found an excellent race pace, riding from second to first place regularly.
Unfortunately, during the first phase of the night, a number of issues forced several unscheduled stops for the riders in the pits. The team worked relentlessly fixing the problems in order to get to the end of the race.
After these misfortunes, the Honda CBR1000R Fireblade SP was back on track and the riders started to gain places little by little, riding at an excellent pace again. The team had climbed back to 28th position when the bike stopped on track at around 10:00 in the morning. Sébastien Gimbert pushed the bike to the garage where, having tried to isolate the problem, the team was forced to retire.
The team’s determination to get the bike to the finish line regardless of the race result means that every piece of data collected during the race will help for the rest of the 2015 Endurance World Championship and Honda Racing is now looking forward to Suzuka 8 Hours on 26 July.
For all the latest news on the team follow @HondaRacingCBR on Twitter.
Neil Tuxworth
We’re very disappointed on behalf of Honda and obviously on behalf of our riders and all the mechanics and staff because everybody worked so hard to be prepared for this race. We just seemed to have an endless amount of problems that we are going to have to look into and find out why they have happened. We are going to have a big meeting back at Honda and decide what direction we are going to go for Suzuka because obviously we have to make some changes to make sure we don’t have any of these issues when we get to that race.
Steven Casaer
Today, what I want to remember is that the supposedly ‘old bike’ that is the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP is absolutely competitive anyway. Besides, it allows us to have a great race strategy because it consumes far less fuel than all the other bikes. Here we had a lot of little problems – usually you get two or three per Endurance race, but today we had them all together, so let’s hope that now we’ll be done with trouble for the rest of the season!
Julien Da Costa
In spite of all the bad luck that we had, we can retain that we were fast; the bike was performing very well, we have a top-level fuel consumption and it’s only a matter of time. We have to solve these problems, but the performance was real and this is promising.
Sebastien Gimbert
We tried to show that we were able to pursue our goals. We thought that the worst was behind us, but every time we were caught by surprise by another breakdown. We were very unlucky during that race and it is a pity because apart from these troubles, we were able to show that we were fast and we had a good race strategy. We would have deserved a better end for us as riders, but also for the team, for Honda and for all the hard work that has been done. I am a bit disappointed, but now I am looking forward to Suzuka, even if the championship points lost today will be difficult to catch up then.
Freddy Foray
We are all more or less disappointed because we had worked a lot and we thought that we could really perform well in Le Mans. However, like last year, we are at the front every time we have a problem, so I am convinced that once we have put everything end-to-end, we’ll perform very well. For now it is a bit difficult to accept, because we were in a good pace, but that’s racing and we’ll have to keep on working for the rest of the championship.