The
first race of the season offers something that will not happen again
for the rest of the calendar - the completely unexpected. New teams join
experienced crews in the paddock. New riders throw their legs over
bikes they've never ridden in anger. And experienced racers find
themselves challenged by a new discipline, new tires, new tracks, new
everything. And any venture into unknown territory is fraught with the
potential for mistakes.
The
80th running of the Bol d'Or endurance classic, the 24-hour contest
held at Circuit Paul Ricard that opened the 2016/17 EWC season, featured
all of the above. The challenge of a 24-hour exposes every weakness,
but equally puts every strength on full display. So exhausted that all
they want to do is collapse, somehow the victors seem to put that aside
for a few shining moments on the podium, where they celebrate not just
their accomplishments, but the pitfalls they have escaped.
Two
racers added FIM Endurance World Championship competition to their
racing resumes in France. In each case, they were faced with a challenge
that offered a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong. And in each
case, more or less, the endurance series offered them the chance to
remain professional motorcycle racers - perhaps the only opportunity
they had.
MotoGP
and World Superbike racer Randy de Puniet turned his first laps in FIM
Endurance World Championship competition on the SRC Kawasaki ZX-10R. A
podium finisher in MotoGP and a winner in 250cc GP competition, de
Puniet took a year off from competition in 2014, taking a paid job
developing the Suzuki MotoGP machine. He was rewarded with a Superbike
World Championship ride with Suzuki in 2015.
It
was scant reward. The Crescent Suzuki team had one foot out the door of
the series and put little effort, relatively speaking, into making the
GSX-R1000 competitive. And de Puniet was blunt in his criticism of the
team - his interviews on the series' website pulled no punches:
After
a year with only two top-10 finishes, de Puniet found that he was not
exactly hot property on the rider market. The French rider found a seat
with the French SRC team, which had been struggling since winning the
Bol the year before. For de Puniet and his team, the race offered a
promise of a fresh start, one with the potential of great success and
significant failure.
Moto
Ain put Moto3 winner Alexis Masbou on its Superstock Yamaha YZF-R1.
Masbou didn't just leave Moto3, he was being pushed. After scoring a
Moto3 win in 2014 and another in 2015, Masbou was only able to find a
ride on a team fielding a Peugeot Moto3 machine for 2016. That worked
out about as well as it sounds like it would, and Masbou was dropped
from the team halfway through the season. And it was his last year in
Moto3, as the class age limit will prevent him from racing in the
smallest GP class in 2017. Masbou was in free fall, and the Moto Ain
team offered him a branch to grasp.
Both made the absolute best of their opportunities.
The SRC team suffered a broken front axle in the middle of the night, but de Puniet,
Gregory Leblanc and Fabien Foret kept pushing and as things went wrong
for the others, kept moving up the order. In the end, SRC had moved
almost as far up the order as was possible, ending the round-the-clock
contest second overall. The last time de Puniet stood on a podium in
international competition was in 2009. Seven years is an eternity in a
racer's career, and those on the outside can only guess at the emotions
de Puniet felt on the podium. Gilles Stafler, SRC team manager, said,
“I’m delighted with Randy’s work. He’s a genuine rider. He just got
better and better ..."
Moto
Ain went one better. On its Superstock-spec R1, the team took sixth
overall and first in class. And Masbou, who hadn't even cracked the top
15 in Moto3 this season and hadn't scored a point, who was out of a job
and was barred from looking for work in the class where he was most
successful, was suddenly and spectacularly once again an international
motorcycle road racing winner.
While
endurance racing offers the unexpected, sometimes the entirely
predictable can still be a surprise of sorts. Suzuki Endurance Racing
Team debuted no new machinery, no new riders, no GP stars. Its GSX-R1000
was one of the oldest machines in the field, overshadowed by the more
modern Yamahas and Kawasakis on the grid.
Yet
SERT, which last season won its 15th endurance championship, fields a
machine, a team and riders that have been tempered in the furnace of
endurance racing success. And as others fell and fell into difficulties,
SERT pounded its advantage home. SERT led at the eight-hour mark and
picked up the bonus points for leading. SERT led at the 16-hour mark and
doubled up on bonus points. And SERT was nine laps ahead when the flag
dropped after 23:51.03.405 of racing, making it a nearly perfect weekend
for the veteran squad. SERT led 683 of the 687 laps. That is not a
misprint. That is nearly a flag-to-flag win in a 24-hour race. In
celebration, Suzuki France ran an ad proclaiming, "The Cougar Spanked
The Youngsters!" Never bet against old age and treachery ...
