24 Hours of Le Mans - Motorcycle

[mika]

fimendurane.com: 24 Hours of Le Mans

24 Heures of le Mans
Just after a start on a dry track, a strong shower came to put trouble in the first laps of the race in Le Mans. Julian Mazuecos, in the lead on Kawasaki France since the first lap, was taken by surprise and heavily crashed in the Dunlop curve. With a broken frame, the official Kawasaki was forced to retire after only four laps. Both machines of the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team took advantage of it securing the first places; with William Costes on the nr. 2 and Vincent Philippe on the nr.1. They were soon caught by Dqvid Checa on the Yamaha France GMT 94 who had finished the first lap in the 26th position after having stalled the engine on the starting grid. After one hour, the Suzuki SERT 2 precedes the Yamaha France 94, the Suzuki SERT 1 and the Yamaha Austria Racing Team.


Live standings ÔÇô updates every 30 seconds.

Hourly standings reports - .pdf ÔÇô are available at the top of the race standings.

 

[PAULBACH]

24 hours - straight ????

Twenty four hours as in 24 hours straight? Tell me it ain't so. Seems humanly impossible. There has to be mandatory rest stops or a switch of riders.

How about a link giving the basics of what seems impossible? Please?

 

[mika]

FIM World Endurance Championship 2008 is the place to start your reading. The Archives have a nice history and the rest of the site gives a good deal of information.

Here are links to pdfÔÇÖs from the FIM web site on the rules the championship operates under.

Classifications for the 2008 Season


Road Racing World Championship
Endurance Regulations

Technical Regulations

Diagrams

Think of it as a team Iron Butt how far can you go in 24 hours with a pit crew and rider changes?

 

[mika]

BMW Motorsport Team #17 is DNF. I have no information at this time what happened

BMW Motorsport Team #71 is currently first in class and has been running between 12th and 17th overall. 12 hours and 14 minutes to go at this report.

 

[mika]

BMW took first in its small class at Le Mans. Beating its only other contender, a Ducati, by 358 laps the #71 BMW finished 16th overall.

Provisional results for all classes.

 

[mika]

Putting the P back in provisional -

TEAM BMW MOTORRAD MOTORSPORT SUFFERS CRUEL LUCK AT LE MANS
After a weekend of problems due to the varying weather conditions, Team BMW Motorrad MotorsportÔÇÖs trio of Richard Cooper, Jos?® Luis Nion and Brian Parriott were heading for a hard-fought for top fifteen finish, until a last lap drama ruled them out. On the very last lap of the 24-hour marathon, Richard was riding smoothly and cruising to the finish, when his bike suddenly suffered a loss of power at the end of the pit straight. He managed to keep it going until La Chapelle, where the marshals told him that he had five minutes to get it across the finish line in order to post a result. He got a bit of a tow from another rider and then began the long, hard push two hundred or so metres from the finish line. But instead of being allowed to cross the finish line, he was directed into the pit-lane by a group of marshals because he was adjudged to be outside the five minute limit! Because of that, he and his team mates were not classified as finishers in the results.


Read the entire news from BMW Motorrad Motorsport in the Morning Reads Monday

 

[Visian]

:Read the entire news from BMW Motorrad Motorsport in the Morning Reads Monday

i don't know how to say this, but it appears that karma exists.

last saturday, i went to watch nate kern race the formula xtreme class over at barber.

he was riding the HP2 sport that he rode at daytona... MINUS all the goody bits from the world endurance bikes. seems like his bike was stripped of the factory special parts after daytona.

he qualified 20th out or 44-or-so bikes, and was circulating in mid-pack during the race.

he stopped coming around after 12 laps, and i was unable to get back over to the pits to find out what happened.... but he essentially DNF'd in 29th place.

i guess the american market just isn't as important as the european market, and the dollar is weak against the euro. and i can certainly understand that performance at lemans reaches these shores via the internet, but it would seem to me that racers who choose a BMW to compete in a national series -- already at a disadvantage -- deserve not to have the good parts taken from their bikes prior to the campaign.

jmo.

ian