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2011
MONZA

Master of Endurance Series

Le Mans 2005 - THE RACE!

Qualifying for the 28th running of the Le Mans 24hr motorcycle race was held in mixed conditions over two days with a wary eye on the weather forecast for the race days. In first qualifying it was the Castrol Suzuki team that took the honours but, as conditions improved the next day, the GMT94 Yamaha team of Sebastien Gimbert, William Castes and David Checa powered ahead to claim pole position ahead of the No.1 Castrol Suzuki, with the Fuchs Kawasaki No.11 taking third place in what was shaping up to be one of the all-time classic 24 hour races. In the Stocksport class the battle promised to be just as memorable, with the Scratch Motos No.49 Kawasaki fighting off challenges from the Suzuki’s of the Junior LMS No.72, the Coquard Motos No.27 and the No.99 Acropolis EMS Yamaha R1 to claim an amazing 5th place on the grid.

The Superproduction class Yamaha of GMT94 showed its strength again in the warm-up session, with riders Gimbert and Checa posting the two fastest times. Team Manager Christophe Guyot already had his race strategy planned. The team had given up all other commitments to concentrate on winning the two big 24 hour races of Le Mans and the Bol d’Or this year and Christophe had instructed his riders to stay out of trouble for the first part of the race.
When the flag dropped, the three top Kawasakis, the Team Fuchs No.11, the Bolliger No.8 and Scratch Motos No.49 vaulted into the lead, chased by the Castrol Suzuki No.1, the GMT94 Yamaha and the Stocksport Acropolis Yamaha No.99.

The National Motos No.5 Honda was the first big name to suffer problems with the drive chain coming off the rear sprocket – the repairs didn’t take long but it would drop them down to next to last place and they would face a race-long battle to get back into contention. Igor Jerman was replacing Ludovic Holon, who was out after breaking his collarbone before the race – then in qualifying, Philippe Dobe was out and Gwen Giabbani was drafted in, making the No.5 Honda somewhat of a “Dream Team” that included Sebastien Scarnato , a full set of top riders. The National Motos team also had Endurance Champions Terry Rymer and Brian Morrison prowling around their pits….

Half an hour into the race and the No.1 Castrol Suzuki had taken the lead with Julian Da Costa on the Fuchs No.11 Kawasaki right on its tail. The pressure to stay with the Suzuki was too much as Da Costa crashed heavily on his 21st lap at the entry to the Dunlop Curve, injuring his ankle – and with the bike too heavily damaged to continue, the Fuchs Kawasaki was out of the race.

Now the GMT94 Yamaha started to attack for the lead and by Lap 49 was only 9 seconds behind the No.1 Suzuki, with Yamaha rider David Checa gaining on the leaders by nearly a second a lap and after the next pit stop on Lap 66, the No.94 Yamaha would take the lead. The No.1 Castrol Suzuki was trying to match the Yamaha’s charge and the lead would swap a number of times between the two due to different pit-stop strategies but, overall, the GMT94 Yamaha was slowly and surely stretching a lead. But trouble lay ahead for the GMT94 Yamaha.

Incidents…we saw the No.110 AM Motoracing Suzuki pushing in, looking as if it was out of fuel…Xavier Fabbra crashed the No.84 EMPP Suzuki and although they started again, by the 4th hour they were out of the race. We also lost the German No.92 Hepelmann Yamaha after 58 laps and the French firemen, the No.18 Sapeurs-Pompiers Suzuki crashed but got going again.

Then, on Lap 144, trouble hit the GMT94 Yamaha. Leading the race and still pulling open the gap over the No1 Suzuki, the gear selector assembly on the GMT94 Yamaha came loose as David Checa went for another gear and he had to nurse the bike back to the pits for a quick repair. It didn’t take long but it was enough to see both the No.1 and No.2 Suzukis snatch the first two places. The top three had now opened up a gap on the Bolliger No.8 Kawasaki in 4th place and the Moto38 Yamaha in 5th. In 6th place, the top Stocksport machine, the Scratch Motos Kawasaki No.49 was starting to come under attack by the No.99 Acropolis Yamaha R1.
More incidents…Lap 156 and the Motoshop No.35 Kawasaki ZX10R crashed out of 18th place and was in for repairs and 6 laps later the No.6 National Motos Playstation II Honda also went down losing 4 laps while being fixed.

GMT94 had fought back to go 6 seconds in front of the No.2 Suzuki when, on Lap 214, the safety cars came out for the first time after the No.70 Team Trail Suzuki went down and this time fate was on the side of the Yamaha team. With both Castrol Suzukis behind one pace car and the GMT94 Yamaha following the second safety vehicle, the situation would play into the hands of Yamaha. After 8 laps the pace cars came in…and GMT94 were now 46 seconds clear of the No.2 Suzuki in third but had lost no time on the leading No.1 Suzuki and set about chasing them down for a second time.

The No.5 National Motos Playstation II Honda had fought back through the field and by 10pm were in 8th and still climbing.
From the second hour of the race, the No.8 Bolliger Kawasaki had held 4th place, slowly losing time to the top three and would hold that place all the way through until 6 in the morning, when The No.5 Honda would squeeze in front of them. The Bolliger teams race was blunted, first by a stripped rear sprocket – and being a captive sprocket, it took longer to fix than just changing the wheel – and later in the race, Marcel Kellenberger had a long push back to the pits after snapping the drive chain.

As darkness closed in, the GMT94 Yamaha slowly but surely closed the gap on the leading Castrol Suzuki No.1

By midnight and after 9 hours of hard racing, the GMT94 Yamaha was back in the lead, rider William Costes taking advantage of a longer than usual pit stop by the No.1 Suzuki– and now the GMT94 Yamaha R1 was leading by over one minute. The rumours circulating the pits were that the Castrol,Suzuki engine man thought the No.1 Suzuki was dry of oil and called it in…but there was nothing wrong – and the leading Suzuki had lost 5 minutes, rejoining the race in 3rd place behind their team-mates.

By 1:30 in the morning, a spirited fight back by the No.1 Suzuki saw rider Keiichi Kitagawa snatch the lap record – but Christophe Guyot’s Yamaha team were controlling the race from the front and, although the No.1 Suzuki passed their team-mates to go into second place, they couldn’t catch the flying Yamaha though the night, GMT94 star David Checa fighting them off and posting a new lap record at 19 minutes past 7 in the morning.

At 04:22 in the morning we had lost the Team Delatang No.41 Yamaha of Warwick Nowland, Piergiorgio Bontempi and Fabien Sohier...at one time the team were up to 6th place but an electrical problem lost them 3 laps and punted them down to 10th...then a couple of hours later, the clutch failed completely. Funny - does it always happen to bike that Piergiorgio rides?...and they dropped to 32nd place. Then, even bigger trouble. Fabien Sohier crashed the bike with a big high-side, earning himself a broken finger and although Warwick was able to go out and come pretty close to his fastest times on the bike, there was a nagging worry about it's handling. No wonder. When they had another look at it in the pits, they found that one of the engine mounts had been broken in the crash. That's the frame done, then...and the Delatang Yamaha was out of the race.

GMT94 were pushing hard to get a cushion as insurance against any unforeseen problems later in the race and the pressure they kept up on the Castrol Suzuki team was beginning to tell. When Suzuki No.1 rider Keiichi Kitagawa came in for a routine pit stop at just after 9am, his team-mate Matthieu Lagrive realized that he wasn’t wearing the identification arm-bands (with integral transponder) that was mandatory for riders…and Castrol Suzuki team manager Dominique Meliand had to call the Japanese rider back to do a double relay.

The top Suzuki team had lost even more time on the GMT94 Yamaha and the leaders looked to be moving out of range…but GMT had lost the race with one hour to go last year and knew that the race wasn’t over.

More incidents…at 10:45 in the morning and Philippe Donischal was pushing the No.6 National Motos Honda back to the pits from La Chapelle – the team had two crashes in the night and the engine had stopped with a snapped conrod – the suspicion was that some gravel had got into the engine. The pace cars came out again when the No.65 Motobox-Kremer Suzuki blew it’s engine on the main straight and the No.2 Castrol Suzuki used the incident to come in and change their exhaust. They were far enough in front of the No.5 Honda to comfortably make repairs and rejoin in the same position.

All the time the GMT94 and the Castrol Suzuki No.1 were battling for the race lead, down in 5th and 6th, the Stocksport honours were being fought over. In 5th, the No.49 Scratch Motos Kawasaki was surprising everyone with their speed and slick pit work…but the No.99 Acropolis Bikerdays EMS Yamaha R1 had been one place behind the Scratch bike since 3am and were pushing hard.

Last year, the GMT94 team had lost the race in the last hour and nobody imagined in their worst nightmares that it would happen again this year…but with just over one hour of the race remaining the leaders were in the pits surrounded by a flurry of activity. There was the suspicion of a slight oil leak around the alternator gasket on the left side of the bike. A quick inspection and a clean-up showed that it might not be serious enough to warrant a repair – a would only take about 3 minutes but it was too close to the end of the race to take the chance – even so, as they rejoined the race, their lead had been drastically cut to only 30 seconds.

In second place, the No.1 Suzuki then mounted a furious challenge, rider Matthieu Lagrive pushing as hard as he knew to cut that gap down – but once again, slowly and surely, the Yamaha No.94 was pulling away. Despite everything that the long-dominant Suzuki team could do, their dreams of a fourth consecutive victory evaporated.

On the final few laps, rider David Checa had eased off – but still took no chances with the GMT94 Yamaha R1 and crossed the finish line after 24 hours as the new Champions of Le Mans.

Christophe Guyot’s GMT94 Yamaha Team had taken pole position, the endurance lap record, the race distance record…and a famous win that they had set their hearts on.

This was also a great day for Pirelli…having only one win at Le Mans against Dunlops’ 14 victories and Michelins’ 12…this time it was Pirellis’ that helped the GMT94 team to the win.

Finally, to add to Yamaha’s glory, after a race-long Stocksport battle between the Scratch Motos No.49 KawasakiZX10R and the Acropolis EMS No.99 Yamaha R1, the Kawasaki pulled off the track in the last hour with a heavily smoking engine, handing the Stocksport class win to the Belgian Yamaha Team.

Honourable Mention: Ian “Gus” Scott, British rider for the Fagersjo-El No.12 Suzuki broke his wrist in the warm-up but was still racing for 24 hours…hard man or what?

Quote of the race:
When Decibels Yamaha rider Russell Baker was asked if he was in pain after landing on his head in a qualifying crash he said “more than I’m letting on…” – a classic!

Roll on the Bol d’Or!

RESULTS

PRE-RACE...

Masters Of Endurance - Le Mans

BRITS AT LE MANS 2005
Russell Baker and Phil Giles - Decibels Endurance No.33 - STOCKSPORT CLASS
Pete Jennings, John Barton and Cal Crutchlow - Team Alfs Endurance No.59 - STOCKSPORT CLASS
Andi Notman and Gus Scott - Team Fagersjo.el.se No.12 - SUPERPRODUCTION CLASS
Ben Wylie and Calvin Hogan - Phase One Endurance Juniors No.3 - SUPERPRODUCTION CLASS

The Team Deletang entry has just been announced for the first round of the Master of Endurance series - with Warwick NOWLAND, Piergiorgio BONTEMPI and Fabien SOHIER aboard a SuperProduction Yamaha R1. Their list of awards is impressive: Warwick is twice World Endurance Champion and Piergiorgio has won the Le Mans 24 hour race 4 times.
Fabien Sohier is one of the fastest of the local French riders, partnering Steve Martin and of Marcus Hinterreiter on the Superproduction #41 at last years' Bol d'Or.

The Word from Warwick - "Team Deletang Yamaha will be one of two official Yamaha teams for the French events, the other being reigning Endurance World Champions, GMT 94 Yamaha. Not only will we have the full support of Yamaha but we will also have the full backing of Michelin. The race is building toward a classic confrontation...Yamaha against Suzuki, Michelin against Dunlop."

"I don’t know Fabien but I am all too familiar with my side-kick Piergiorgio from last years Superbike World Championship. Piergiorgio and I had a lot of laughs last year and I am sure that will continue. When Yamaha offered me the job, I thought one thing… beat Suzuki! After winning Le Mans last year with Suzuki, and not joining them again this year, I was a bit upset. Joining Yamaha was the perfect solution! However, after receiving an email from Suzuki France on Friday, it is clear there are no hard feelings. We are still great friends and are looking forward to the battle!"
 

Planning to travel to Le Mans this year? Check HERE for a map of all the fixed speed cameras in France.
Click HERE for an access map to the track.
Click HERE for the technical regulations.

Le Mans 2005
Just like Audi in the Le Mans 24 hour car race, Suzuki have dominated the 24hr scene in recent years…but last year Christophe Guyot’s GMT94 Yamaha R1 won the… ahem, “23” hours of Le Mans. Halted by clutch problems right at the end, they let the Castrol Suzuki team through for yet another win.

This year Suzuki has the new generation GSXR1000 with a new chassis, new motor (10 extra horses and 1000 more revs). The riders are Vincent Philippe, Keiichi Kitagawa and Stéphane Chambon with Matthieu Lagrive, Guillaume Dietrich and Stéphane Duterne on the second machine. Apart from the main team, it looks like Suzuki will now also field Damien Saulnier’s Junior Suzuki LMS Team (Lycée Le Mans Sud), with Thomas Metro, David Fouloi and...initial indications that Spanish rider Diego Lozano was on board have changed...young Spaniard, 28-year-old Salvadore Cabana from Barcelona. He has considerable endurance experience having raced in the Catalonia 24-Hour event (2nd in 2004) as well as distinguishing himself in the ‘1000 Extreme’ National Championship - with Franck Millet on board as reserve rider.

As in 2004, Yamaha will be counting on Christophe Guyot's GMT 94 team to win this year with a positively anorexic R1 – the bike has lost 10kgs since last year. The FIM World Champions are concentrating on the main Masters races this year before probably going World Superbike racing in 2006 with the same outstanding riding team as last year - Sébastien Gimbert, William Costes and David Checa.
Along with GMT 94, two other teams have Yamaha backing: Jean-Claude Claperon's Endurance Moto38 and Jean-Marc Deletang's Team Delatang, with riders Warwick Nowland, Piergiorgio Bontempi and the Frenchman Fabien Sohier...both teams fielding their Yamaha R1's in the Superproduction category.

Follow this with Honda’s “Objective Podium” mission, backed by Honda Motor Europe. The two teams tasked with this mission are the Superproduction entries of DAP Moto 91 (Bertrand Stey, Stephane and Frederick Jond with Jean-Francois Courtinovis as a spare) and the National Bike team (Bike No.5 with Philippe Dobé, Ludovic Holon and Sébastien Scarnato - Bike No.6 with Bruno Bonhuil and Philippe Donischal, with initial third rider Christophe Cogan being replaced with the awesome talent of current Yamaha Austria rider and former Police Nationale and Moto38 pilot Gwen Giabbani) with two CBR 1000RR’s.

Team Kawasaki France will be also in the hunt with their ZX10R and hoping to improve on the 3rd place they gained at last years’ Bol d’Or – and they have World Superbike rider Mauro Sanchini with Julian Da Costa and Patrick Piot with possibly Spaniard Pere Riba as well! That’s one STRONG team! Other satellite teams running the Green Meanie will include Bike Shop 35, 3DF Endurance, R'Bike - with Scratch Bike once again aiming to take the Stocksport honours.

On top of all this, there’s the traditional Le Mans entertainment – and apart from the free-standing engines running at full-chat with megaphone exhausts until they blow up – there’s the rock concerts on Friday and Saturday, a full programme of support races, including something TRULY historic…the international Classic Grand Prix devoted to Grand Prix machines of the 70's and 80's.
(Interesting aside - the  International Classic Grand Prix features riders such as Phil Read and Charlie Williams and looks like being a real British/French fight - it's one German and two Belgians in amongst a field of 48 riders, with 23 Brits battling 22 Frenchmen...incroyable...)
FULL ICGP ENTRY LIST HERE

It’s going to be totally unmissable – as usual!

Le ECURIE NATIONAL MOTOS - PLAYSTATION 2 HONDA de BRUNO BONHUIL
...and after the Yamaha Austria No7 in World Endurance, Gwen Giabbani will be joining both Phillipe Donischal and Bruno for Le Mans...

This is the one-and-only mad-as-a-plate-of-Turkey-Twizzers BRUNO!

...and the Honda is a beautiful as a Brittan....almost, anyway...