TEAM BMW MOTORRAD MOTORSPORT READY TO RACE.
 Both
Team BMW Motorrad Motorsport’s teams qualified comfortably
for the Bol d'Or 24 hours tomorrow afternoon, with bike number
17 (Thomas Hinterreiter, Rico Penzkofer, Richard Cooper) in
28th and bike number 71 (Markus Barth, Jose Luis Nion, Brian
Parriot) in 39th. This weekend’s Bol d’Or is the
fifth and penultimate round of this year’s Endurance
World Championship and is the 71st edition of this famous
race.
The Bol d’Or is Team BMW Motorrad Motorsport’s
third World Endurance Championship race of the year and probably
their toughest challenge so far. The circuit layout, with
its long, fast straights and slow corners doesn’t really
suit the R12OOS bikes and the experience will be very different
(and harder!) to the last round in Oschersleben. Nevertheless
BMW Motorrad Motorsport are looking forward to the challenge
and are getting ready to surprise some of their more-established
rivals.
Bike No 17 - Thomas Hinterreiter
This circuit is a very different proposition to Oschersleben
and it’s going to be a lot of hard work out there this
weekend for all of us. We had a tremendous result in the last
round and that gave us a lot of encouragement, but here we
are starting all over again. The nature of the track doesn’t
suit our bike so well, but we’ll ride as hard as we
can and see if we cause a bit of a stir. There are a lot of
fast bikes out there this weekend, but I’m still hoping
for a top 15 place.
Bike 71 - Jose Luis Nion
I think we all know it’s going to be a tough race for
us this weekend, but hopefully we’ll still be in it
at the end. If we can keep doing fast, consistent laps we
might get a top 15 place. That’s what we’re hoping
for, but we’ll have to wait and see how it all works
out in the race.
Berti Hauser (BMW Motorrad Motorsport Director)
I know that 28th and 39th doesn’t sound too good, but
we’re not bothered about grid positions. In fact, I
am very satisfied with the qualifying and happy because all
our lap times are fast and consistent. We made some rider
changes and everything has worked out really really well.
They have all worked hard and helped each other out - the
team atmosphere is excellent. Since the start of the season,
our bike has lost 15 kilogrammes, but there are no real changes
since the last couple of races. Markus (Barth) has not been
very well and is suffering from a nasty virus. Because of
this he has not been able to do a lot of laps in practice,
but we are hoping he is fit enough for the race tomorrow.
On a more personal note, it is nice to welcome Stephane (Mertens)
back to the racetrack - and on a racebike! He called us recently
and said he was almost ready to race again, so we gave him
the chance to try one of the bikes in our practice sessions.
At first he looked a bit uncomfortable, understandable after
his long lay-off, but he quickly settled down and it wasn’t
long before he was putting in some good lap times. His appearance
here on a bike surprised quite a few people and was certainly
good for all of us in the team.
Provisional grid
1 SERT (Philippe, LaGrive, Da Costa) , 2 KRT France (Plater,
Giabbani, Mazuecos), 3 SERT (Costes, Dietrich, Neukirchner),
4 Yamaha GMT94 (Checa D, Gimbert, Four), 5 Maccio Racing (Nigon,
Marchand, Cudlin), 6 Yamaha Austria (Jerman, Martin, Scarnato)
28 BMW Motorrad Motorsport (Thomas Hinterreiter, Rico Penzkofer,
Richard Cooper), 39 BMW Motorrad Motorsport (Markus Barth,
Jose Luis Nion, Brian Parriot)
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