The 2008 World Endurance championship started on the 19th April with the Le Mans 24hr. With 35 points available, a good result was very important for Phase One’s title hopes.
The riders for the race were to be Damian Cudlin, James Haydon and Stefan Duterne. However during qualifying 1 Duterne was hit by another rider and crashed. Luckily he was ok and able to return the bike to the pits. We then set to work on repairing the bike so that the next rider could qualify on it. As Cudlin left the pit on the repaired bike to get on with his session, grumblings of a very stereotypical nature emerged from the Frenchman Duterne. In short Duterne refused to ride for Phase One because he wasn’t allowed out on the spare bike after the crash. This was because the team could not risk the second bike having a crash and thus having no bike to use in the next session.
Luckily James McBride was with the team as 4th rider, so that he could ride the bike before he uses it at the Isle of Mann TT later this year. So with this turn of events, Phase One raced with Cudlin, Haydon and McBride. The team made a good start and by hour 3 had reached 3rd place and were having a great battle with Acropolis and Infiniteam. At around 8hrs in, an odd noise was coming from the bike during a pitstop. The bike was sent out whilst we discussed what the noise could be. it was decided to bring the bike in to check that the exhaust headers were not coming loose, as they could have damaged the radiator, and also to take the opportunity to change brake calipers. This was done efficiently and it was determined that the noise was probably a cracked header and it was unlikely to cause a problem.
During the night James Haydon had a fairly large crash, after the Acropolis bike touched him as it overtook in the tricky conditions. The crash cost 18 minutes, 9 minutes pushing and 9 minutes repairing a broken subframe, exhaust, fairing, petrol tank, footrest, and rear caliper. a few hours later McBride crashed in the wet and we lost a further 5 minutes in the repair.
Finding ourselves in 19th position we pushed hard into the morning and by 3pm managed 12th overall and 10th in class, giving us 8 points.
The whole week was a grind but the team dealt well with the hurdles and came away with some points unlike YART,GMT, and TKF.
Roll on Albacete.
