Cruel luck for BMW

From Team BMW Motorrad

After a weekend of problems due to the varying weather conditions, Team BMW Motorrad Motorsport’s trio of Richard Cooper, José Luis Nion and Brian Parriott were heading for a top 15 finish until a last lap drama ruled them out.

On the very last lap of the 24-hour marathon, Cooper was riding smoothly and cruising to the finish when his bike suddenly suffered a loss of power at the end of the pit straight. He managed to keep it going until La Chapelle, where the marshals told him that he had five minutes to get it across the finish line in order to post a result.

He got a bit of a tow from another rider and then began the long, hard push 200 or so metres from the finish line. But instead of being allowed to cross the finish line, he was directed into the pit-lane by a group of marshals because he was adjudged to be outside the five minute limit. Because of that, he and his team mates were not classified as finishers in the results.

BMW Motorrad Motorsport’s other team (Sébastien Le Grelle, Stéphane Mertens and Rico Penzkofer) had suffered misfortune just before half race distance. They were on course for a tremendous top 10 finish when the bike suffered a dramatic loss of power. Mertens felt the bike slow on the front straight, so pulled the bike off the track just before the Dunlop bridge.

Before long, one of the team’s mechanics appeared and together they tried to restart the bike. But, on hearing a strange noise they decided that it would be better not to continue.

Once again, the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team took first and second places in the Le Mans 24 hours. Last year’s race winners - Suzuki No. 2 ridden by William Costes, Guillaume Dietrich and Dutchman Barry Veneman - won this year’s race, 11 laps ahead of Suzuki No. 1 of Vincent Philippe, Matthieu Lagrive and Julien da Costa, with the Yamaha Acropolis Motor Expert trio of Grégory Fastre, Grégory Leblanc and Anthony Dos Santos third.