FIM EWC 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours Results
Cycle News Staff | April 23, 2024
The Yoshimura SERT team of Gregg Black, Dan Linfoot and Etienne Masson fought back from a crash to take the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours on the weekend as the FIM Endurance World Championship season kicked off.
What was shaping up to be the perfect start to Yamalube YART Yamaha EWC Official Team’s EWC title defense ended when Karel Hanika crashed out of the lead at the 16-hour mark. The Austrian outfit set new lap records in both qualifying and the race and led comfortably by four laps until Hanika’s error in the cold early morning conditions, which dropped the team back to third place behind runner-up BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team of Markus Reiterberger, Illya Mykhalchyk and Sylvain Guintoli. Hanika injured his shoulder in his Sunday morning crash and the decision was taken for his teammates Niccolo Canepa and Marvin Fritz to complete the race as a pair.
“It’s always good to finish the race, but the objective is to win,” Suzuki’s Gregg Black said. “We won in 2021 and 2022, but those races were a bit easier because we could relax towards the end. We were quite fast with YART, but with the crash, we dropped quite far back and had to push all the way to the end.
“BMW and YART had issues and we ended up leading the race when, on paper, we thought maybe we would finish third or second. But we made no more mistakes and kept pushing. In the end, we only had one lap over BMW, so we couldn’t relax. It’s amazing to be back on the first step [of the podium here], just amazing. Dan, Etienne, and the whole team have done such great work all winter; we showed our speed and got our revenge from last year. It’s just awesome.”
The Dunlop-equipped FIM Endurance World Cup category was taken by the National Motos Honda team, the outfit gaining revenge for its agonizing Bol d’Or retirement last September when it was on course for the Superstock title, only to stop with 20 minutes remaining. Chromeburner-RAC41-Honda finished second, followed by 3ART Best of Bike after the number-36 Yamaha was repaired after a crash nearing the final hour.CN