Anthony Delhalle was certain that he
had thrown away the championship before the 2016 FIM Endurance World
Championship season had reached the two-hour mark. The Suzuki
Endurance Racing Team rider has won the World Championship multiple
times in the past. He knows what it takes to earn the title.
But there he was, his first stint of the season, sliding down the road at Le Mans in the season-opening 24 hour race, the bodywork making the sickening crunching noise that comes with sliding a road racing motorcycle across the pavement and into the gravel trap. After two hours, SERT, the defending champion, was in 53rd place, 11 laps down on the leaders F.C.C. TSR Honda.
The team had clawed its way back to fifth by the end of the 24 hours. But that left SERT with a big deficit. The championship was still visible, but the obstacles on the path to the top of the charts were massive.
The biggest problem was speed. In qualifying for the 24 Motos, SERT had edged the GMT94 Yamaha Official EWC Team, but that was only good enough for fourth on the grid. All the other teams expected to challenge at the front for the title were quicker, and some of them by a significant margin. The aging GSX-R1000 platform could no longer be counted on to put in chart-leading lap times. If SERT was going to take the 2016 season, it was going to do so with race strategy and mistake-free performances in the pits and on the track. The bike had to be mechanically perfect, the pit crew perfect, the riders perfect.
And Delhalle had just blown a gaping hole in that plan.
The next round was either more or less heartbreaking, depending on your perspective, but heartbreaking either way. After 12 hours of racing at Portimao in Portugal, SERT was beaten to the line by GMT94 by 0.081 seconds. Drag races are won by bigger margins. And while the time difference was insignificant, the points difference wasn't - that tiny margin cost SERT six championship points.
But over 52 hours of racing in 2016, every team was due to suffer a setback or two. When and where those setbacks happen make all the difference in racing. In Portugal, the Le Mans-winning SRC Kawasaki team dropped out after seven hours. At Suzuka, SRC dropped out again. And while SERT crashed and comprehensively wrecked its Suzuki in Japan and scored zero points, its closest competitors fared equally poorly. The Japanese teams that race only the Suzuka round of the EWC championship took all the big-points placings, leaving six teams with a mathematical chance of winning the title at the last round at Oschersleben.
Seven hours into the race in Germany found SERT in the lead. The other title contenders had either dropped out or suffered so many problems that they were no longer a threat - that is, all but GMT94 Yamaha. It came down to a simple formula - GMT94 had to win and SERT had to finish third or lower for the Yamaha squad to take the title. If SERT finished second, it would win by a single point.
SERT put Delhalle on the GSX-R1000 for the final stint of the season. Delhalle had been here before. Six years prior, in his first season with SERT, the team won the title by one point. He knew what he had to do - and that was, at all costs, to not repeat the mistake he had made in Le Mans at the season opener, all those long, long racing hours ago.
Delhalle was flawless on his final stint. The GSX-R1000 came across the line in second, 21 seconds behind GMT94.
The record books show that SERT did not win a single race in the 2016 season. But those same record books show SERT as the 2016 FIM EWC Champion. And when testing opened at Circuit Paul Ricard for the 2017 season, the SERT machine had a big number 1 on the front of the fairing.
"Endurance is crazy. After Le Mans, I thought it was not possible to come back on the top of the championship, but ..." Delhalle says.
But there he was, his first stint of the season, sliding down the road at Le Mans in the season-opening 24 hour race, the bodywork making the sickening crunching noise that comes with sliding a road racing motorcycle across the pavement and into the gravel trap. After two hours, SERT, the defending champion, was in 53rd place, 11 laps down on the leaders F.C.C. TSR Honda.
The team had clawed its way back to fifth by the end of the 24 hours. But that left SERT with a big deficit. The championship was still visible, but the obstacles on the path to the top of the charts were massive.
The biggest problem was speed. In qualifying for the 24 Motos, SERT had edged the GMT94 Yamaha Official EWC Team, but that was only good enough for fourth on the grid. All the other teams expected to challenge at the front for the title were quicker, and some of them by a significant margin. The aging GSX-R1000 platform could no longer be counted on to put in chart-leading lap times. If SERT was going to take the 2016 season, it was going to do so with race strategy and mistake-free performances in the pits and on the track. The bike had to be mechanically perfect, the pit crew perfect, the riders perfect.
And Delhalle had just blown a gaping hole in that plan.
The next round was either more or less heartbreaking, depending on your perspective, but heartbreaking either way. After 12 hours of racing at Portimao in Portugal, SERT was beaten to the line by GMT94 by 0.081 seconds. Drag races are won by bigger margins. And while the time difference was insignificant, the points difference wasn't - that tiny margin cost SERT six championship points.
But over 52 hours of racing in 2016, every team was due to suffer a setback or two. When and where those setbacks happen make all the difference in racing. In Portugal, the Le Mans-winning SRC Kawasaki team dropped out after seven hours. At Suzuka, SRC dropped out again. And while SERT crashed and comprehensively wrecked its Suzuki in Japan and scored zero points, its closest competitors fared equally poorly. The Japanese teams that race only the Suzuka round of the EWC championship took all the big-points placings, leaving six teams with a mathematical chance of winning the title at the last round at Oschersleben.
Seven hours into the race in Germany found SERT in the lead. The other title contenders had either dropped out or suffered so many problems that they were no longer a threat - that is, all but GMT94 Yamaha. It came down to a simple formula - GMT94 had to win and SERT had to finish third or lower for the Yamaha squad to take the title. If SERT finished second, it would win by a single point.
SERT put Delhalle on the GSX-R1000 for the final stint of the season. Delhalle had been here before. Six years prior, in his first season with SERT, the team won the title by one point. He knew what he had to do - and that was, at all costs, to not repeat the mistake he had made in Le Mans at the season opener, all those long, long racing hours ago.
Delhalle was flawless on his final stint. The GSX-R1000 came across the line in second, 21 seconds behind GMT94.
The record books show that SERT did not win a single race in the 2016 season. But those same record books show SERT as the 2016 FIM EWC Champion. And when testing opened at Circuit Paul Ricard for the 2017 season, the SERT machine had a big number 1 on the front of the fairing.
"Endurance is crazy. After Le Mans, I thought it was not possible to come back on the top of the championship, but ..." Delhalle says.
