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Le Mans 2000 On the 15th and 16th of April this year the Year 2000 World Motorcycle Endurance Championships started at Le Mans, about 190km south of Paris in France. Among the top names drafted in for the event were ex-Supermotard Champion and sometime 500cc GP rider Jean-Michel Bayle, former Endurance Champion and 3-times winner of Le Mans, Brian Morrison, another former Champion and Le Mans winner Belgian Stephane Mertens and the son of 8-times World Champion Phil Read, Roki Read...even USA riders Joe Prussiano and Shaun Higbee were riding, along with the cream of French motorcycling talent. As a full world Championship event, it comes under the auspices of SBK/Flammini Group - yet there was nobody from Flammini there...their SBK passes were not recognized by the French racing authorities. The French seem to object to Flammini Group taking over what they consider to be a peculiarly "French" event. Another result of the French being "different", meant that rules regarding the participants and bikes saw some strange decisions. An invitation was made to the German Das Boxer Team to enter their R1100SR twin in the "Prototype" class, providing that they could qualify within 115% of the top lap time. This they did, though the French made a decision to rule them out of racing anyway and didn't inform the team until late on Friday...needless to say, after being invited to attend, the Germans didn't take too kindly to being excluded. Rules also say that the exhaust systems should be tested for compliance with noise levels BEFORE the race, as at the end of racing, a lot of baffle material would have been blown out of the pipes. The organizers decided that, should they decide to test the pipes, they would do it after the race. Could this depend on which team won, we wondered? :) Their is also the rule which says that you can't swap fuel tanks during the race...the organizers decided that they would apply this during practice as well. There was even a question over the use of hydraulic front wheel stands, meaning that some teams were faced with the task of getting two mechanics to hold up the front of the bike to change the wheel during the race! The 15th dawned with high winds and lashing rain, the riders able to get both dry and wet practice sessions done beforehand. Kawasaki France rider Bertrand Sebileau got pole position with a lap of 1' 42.68" for the team which included Ludovic Holon and Britain's Steve Plater. The first bike away at the start was the No94 Kawasaki of Christophe Guyot's GMT team, consistantly one of the top privateer teams for the past few years, only to lose the lead to a flying Superstock class bike, the No. 4 National Motos Honda CBR900 before the third corner. That lead didn't last for long...Brian Morrison on the 44 Avenue Yamaha (one of last years Yamaha France YZF750 R7's) started putting in fast laps from the word go and by the 4th lap had pulled out a sizeable lead. The No11 Kawasaki France ZXR750 with Bertrand Sebileau on board made a disastrous tyre choice for the start of the race, their Dunlops of too hard a compound to give any grip in the rain, with Sebileau crashing twice and also running off the track twice in the first hour! Ronnie Smith, Performance Bike writer and extremely capable racer, mentioned that when he was behind Sebileau he could see that the rear tyre was spinning up at the very first hint of throttle out of a corner. After 2 hours, the No11 Kawasaki was down in 43rd place. Plater and Holon brought the bike up to 9th by the end of the third hour after the rain eased and took the fastest lap of the race, 1'43.605"...this wasn't enough to make up the distance to the leaders but they were up to 6th place by early the next morning and only 9 laps down on the No. 0 Suzuki of Jean Michel Bayle, Christian LaVielle and Arnaud Van Den Bossche. After a great start the No16 44 Avenue of Brian Morrison, Bruno Cazade and Thierry Paillot brought themselves up from 48th place after problems during the first hour to get into the lead by the half-way point! At 12 hours to go, the top 5 were Yamaha No.16, No.111 Elf Honda, No. 94 GMT Kawasaki No.0 Castrol Suzuki and No. 5 Phase 1 Suzuki, with the top Stocksport machine being the No. 4 National Motos Honda CBR900 ten laps away from the leading machine. It was during the first part of the race, with a huge number of riders going down, that the No111 Honda of William Costes, Sebastian Charpentier and Sebastian Gimbert really showed what it was capable of in the wet. The V-Twin Honda RC51 was able to put it's fat power pulses down to the track far better than the 4 cylinder machines of the main opposition. There was a big question over the reliability of Hondas brand new flagship...it had won first time out in the World Superbike series...but how would it hold up in the toughest sportsbike endurance race in the world? After 12 hours, 10 out of the original 56 starters had retired, the most important being the single Yamaha France entry of Jean-Marc Delatang, Eric Mahe and Fabien Foret...that meant that Yamahas hopes were tied up in the semi-factory 44 Avenue machine! The small fact that there were quite a few people with "Yamaha France" jackets on in Bruno Faure's team pit testified to the interest from Jean Claude Olivier, the Yamaha France team boss. During the night temperatures got down to 1 degree C with more rain and more crashes, the most serious being Jean Michel Bayle on the No. 0 Castrol Suzuki. After leading for 7 hours, Bayle crashed and broke his elbow...that meant that Christian LaVielle and Arnoud Van Den Bossche had to do back-to-back sessions for the rest of the race, a punishing schedule at this level of competition. Also during the night, the Dunlop tyre people pulled out all the stops and had trucks coming in from all over Europe delivering a larger selection of compounds for the riders using their tyres. In the dry, they were definitely the tyre to have, with the Michelins performing better in the wet. Come the dawn and the No. 16 44 Avenue Yamaha was still leading, the No. 111 Elf Honda only one lap down, privateers GMT Kawasaki in third, the Castrol Suzuki 4th and Russell Benny's M&P Phase 1 Suzuki with Belgian Stephane Mertens, Swedish fighter pilot Peter Linden and Warwick Nowland lying 5th. The No. 11 Kawasaki of Sebileau, Plater and Holon retired just before dawn after Sebileau crashed again hurting his ankle and back - Holon having a crash as well and the team deciding that discretion was the better part of valour. A quick mention to the Zongshen Honda RC45 team. They were carrying the No.1 plate, as one of the riders, Jehan D'Orgeix was joint World Champion with Britains Terry Rymer from last year. The team had a lot of funds, top riders with D'Orgeix, Bruno Bonhuil and Eric Gomez...but sadly, very little team organization. After a huge crash at the start of the race where the rear subframe and exhaust system had to be totally replaced, they had problem after problem, spent a total of more than 5 hours in the pits and never got out of last place. With the No.16 Yamaha and No.111 Honda sometimes on the same lap for the majority of Sunday's racing and the No.0 Suzuki always 3 laps behind, it was going to come down to race tactics towards the last 2 hours...that was until Thierry Paillot crashed on the No. 16 Yamaha after getting (and ignoring) a warning from his rear tyre as he exited the pits for his last stint. The Yamaha had blown a clutch cover and spilt oil on the back wheel, spitting Paillot off the bike and put paid to the final challenge for the lead. The brand new Elf Honda RC51 took the chequered flag to cement it's reputation as the worthy successor to the RC30 and RC45, Suzuki's LaVielle and Van Den Bossche got a well-deserved 2nd place and the Yamaha came home 3rd. Special mention for Steven Williams Gataka team ZX9R Superstock bike...the first race for this new team with a very creditable 19th place overall on a bike that only had an exhaust and rear shock change from stock, with 19 year old Kelvin Reilly being the youngest ever finisher at Le Mans! - and M&P Phase One...after running in 5th place for the vast majority of the race, they suffered a holed piston with less than three hours to go and performed a full engine-out / rebuild in 52 minutes to get back in the race and finish 9th in class. FINALLY... The Zongshen team...yup, last place out of 40 finishers, 197 laps behind the winners...and 100 laps behind 39th place! They never gave up...
There
are a total of seven Endurance rounds this year, Le Mans, Estoril / Portugal on
the 28th of May, Spa / Belgium 24hr on the 16th/17th of July, Suzuka / Japan 8hr on
the 30th of July, Oschersleben / Germany on the 13th of August, Magny Cours (Bol
d'Or) / France 24hr on the 17th and 18th of September and Valencia / Spain to be
confirmed for the 5th of November Copyright © 1999 Race Corporation. All Rights Reserved. |
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