The BMW Motorrad Motorsport team are celebrating after the R 1200 S took the Open class win and a very creditable 16th place overall at the weekend’s 30th 24 Hours Le Mans race, marking BMW’s return to competitive road racing after a 50-year absence. Despite being down on power compared to their rivals, the number 17 team of Marcus Barth, Thomas Hinterreiter and Rico Penzkofer completed 776 laps of the 2.65 mile Bugatti circuit, coming home in 16th place overall in front of 90,000 motorcycle race fans.
The R 1200 S sports boxer not only took 16th overall in this hard-fought 24 Hour endurance event, but also powered home to win the Open Class category.
The race was won by the Suzuki Endurance Race Team, who completed 818 laps by the chequered flag. SERT’s sister team come home in second place, while in third was the Team Kawasaki France factory squad, which included British rider Steve Plater.
From a total of 56 teams who started the punishing event, only 34 reached the finish line, marking a 60% survival rate, which makes the achievement of the BMW Motorrad Motorsports team all the more impressive.
Director of BMW Motorrad Motorsport, Berti Hauser, was delighted with the team’s first official outing and believes that fans can expect more of the same throughout 2007: “After five years of the Boxer Cup, we wanted a new challenge and we also wanted to give something back to the fans. We wanted to participate in a major race but knew we couldn’t do Superbike with this bike (because of the regulations) so we chose what is probably the toughest discipline of all – endurance!”
“Le Mans is probably the most famous and also the toughest endurance race on the calendar, and with many strong teams participating, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. However, I never expected we’d finish in the top 16 and I am both happy and delighted with this performance. The team’s motivation and spirit has been super throughout and this result is a great reward for everybody’s hard work and commitment. We’ve learnt so much just from being part of this race and we’ve got a lot of ideas to work on that I know will help us improve the bike even more for the next challenge.”
This season the BMW Motorrad Motorsports team will enter a total of four 24-hour races. In addition to Le Mans, the team will contest the 24-hour races of Barcelona over July 7th/8th the Oschersleben round over the 11th/12th of August and the famous Bol d’Or at Magny Cours on 15th/16th of September.
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