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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127726
.R A O DRACE . ... Round 1: 24 Hours of Le Mans . ..World Endurance Championship ' e a~ Gar cia. And th is orde r would change only at the first pit stop, wh en six riders were pe nalized a lap for having entered the pit lane at an excessive speed. Am on g them were leade r Morillas, Rymer and Bertin (the official Kawasaki was clocked at 101 mph ins tea d of the allowed 50 mph). Followi ng the pena lties, Vieira found himself in the lead for the firs t time. Bu t that lead was sho rtlived as two hour s into the race Morrison and the leading Honda were in the gravel trap, crashing out after having a rear tire go flat. The mishap ended up cost ing the team more than eight minu tes and some 20 places . "Some two laps before, I felt the back of the bike moving around a bit, but that d idn't worry me too much, as only eight laps remained for me to end my turn and. I thoug ht the tire wa s on ly at its wits ' end," the Scotsman said. "Bu t then all of a sudden I went down. In the pit, footres ts and some other minor things had to be replaced." All this occurred about a half-ho ur after the first official Yamaha went out , with Muscat (the rep lacement rider for Dominique Sarron) crashed and was taken to the hospital for further examination. At that time, Moineau and Rymer started their battle for the lead . The duel ended provisionally in favor of Rymer, who had wo rked away his speeding penalty after a few hours. Five hou rs after the start, the official Kawasaki lead from the Suzuki, the only rem aining official Yamaha, and the first p rivate bikes from Guyot/ Dami de/Lussi a na, Mattioli I Mertens I Simo n a nd Vieira 's Honda . (Left) Where it all began: The Le Mansstyle start gets the Le Mans 24-Hour endurance race underway. (Below) Rache l Nic olle combined with Brian Morrison and Alex Vieira to win the rac e on a factory Honda RC45. By Joha n Vandekerckhove LEMANS, FRANCE, APR. 15-16 he clock seems to have been turned back in endu rance road ra cin g, with th e s ucce ssful return of a n o ffici al Hon da team led by multi-time cha mp io n A lex Vie ira . The Portu gu ese French ma n, w ho d omin ated the ma rat hon races at th e end of the '80s and the n in the ea rly '90s, helped carry the factory RC45 to victory in its European debu t, ending a four- year winless d rough t for Honda. Since the Bol d 'Or in 1990, every European endurance race had bee n wo n by either a Kawasaki or a Suzuki, but that ended with a splendid o u ting b y Vieira and h is teamma tes Rachel Nicotte an d Brian Morrison. And the result is eve n more impressive wh en yo u consider that seven fact ory bike s we re entered at Le Mans by five d ifferent constru ctors . The technical regulations introduced a yea r ago which mandates tha t su perbikes be ru n in th e World Enduran ce se ri es seems to ha ve lu red m any of th e m an ufac tu rers back to the lo ngd istan ce races - and Ho nda is among them. Ho nda es tablish ed a three-race program (Le Mans, .Spa an d Bol d 'Or), w it h possibly a se co n d " to p rider s" team for the Bol d'Or at the end of the season . Du cat i w ill also be pr esent in the three Euro pean 24-hour races with two bikes, while two official Yamaha s will compete in the tw o French classics (Le Mans an d Bol d 'Or ). Strange ly, Su zuki and Kawas aki - th e only tw o constructors who stayed in end u ra nce racing since 1991 - are relyin g on only T one b ike each for th e three 24-h ou r events. QUALIFYING Right from the sta rt of free pr actice, Vieira and the RC45 (used previously by a Ja pa nese facto ry team in the 1994 Suzuka 8-Hou r race ) wer e impress ive . Vieira stepped up the pace even fur ther d u ring the official practice sessio ns, ending th e day w ith a pole positi onwinning time of one minute, 44.74 seconds. " No t an easy th in g to d o w ith 70 bikes on this tw isty track," Vieira admitted on Friday evening. "1 might ha ve done a bit better, but 1 lost a few fractions of a second when Dominiq ue Sarron hit the dust just in front of me." The you nge r of the Sarron brothers was rid ing one of the two official Yamahas, in the company of teammates Marc a nd Bernard Garcia, the two b rot he rs who are ridin g in the 500cc Gran d Prix this year. "1 was at the end of my fastest lap," Sarron sa id. "Bu t it all went w ron g in the last com er before start and finis h. The rear tire let go and down I wen t." Th e Frenchman hurt h is sho u lder and a rib. After doing some careful laps durin g Sunday m orning ' s warm-up, Sa rron d ecided to watch th e 24-ho ur race from a safe distan ce and his place was ta ken b y D a vid M u scat. They would start from eigh th position. Terry Rymer, Jean-Louis Battistini and [ehan d 'Orgeix took their official Kawasaki to the second position on the starti ng grid, despite a crash by Rymer which left the team's spa re bike in flam es. Third place went to Adrien Mori11as, Jean-Marc .Deltang and Denis Bon oris and fou rth was the Suzuki ridden by Herv Moineau, Christian Lavieille and Juan-Eric Gomez. The fastest of the two Ducatis ended up seventh. . RACE After a short demon strat ion by th e two Ducat is, Morillas took co mma nd from d 'Orge ix, Vieira, Mo ineau a nd At roughly 10:00 a.m., the pace cars came out on the track after several riders had cra sh ed on the slippe ry track. When th e ligh ts tu rned green, Michel Simon went for it again, forgetting that th e tir es had coo led do wn during the pace-car lap s. The Belgian Suzuki dealer crashed and the team lost almos t 20 laps while getting the bike back to the pits. At that time, Vieira took over fourth.