With an eight-lap lag, the Monster YART team on a Yamaha secured a third-place finish, and three fewer laps were completed by the Bolliger Team Switzerland on a Kawasaki during the 24-hour race.
In the fourth race of the 2011 Qtel FIM Endurance World Championship and the thirty-fourth at the legendary Le Mans racetrack, teams with Akrapovič exhaust systems took third, fourth, and seventh places among the twenty-four teams. The Austrian Yamaha team Monster YART performed the best; after a fall by Loris Baz at the beginning of the race, the team started completely from behind, but during the night was able to work its way up to an eight-lap lag behind the lead team and an outstanding third-place finish, which is their best placing this year.
“I’ve learned a lot. In Endurance, you have to make it with the other two riders. Because of me, we lost the opportunity to fight for the win, but we had great lap times during the night. It was physically and mentally challenging,” said the rider, whose fall cost the team the chance for victory.
With an eleven-lap lag, fourth place was won by Bolliger Team Switzerland, and BMW Motorrad France 99’s seventh-place finish earned them enough points to preserve their lead position in the overall standings. They’ve got eighty-one points going into the finale at Doha, eighteen more than the SRC Kawasaki team. If they can hold their position on 12 November in Qatar, this will be the first endurance race victory for BMW!
Photo: www.YART.at