YART starts to defend the title for pole position / World Endurance Championship

After finishing all groups in first place in the first qualifying session the day before, YART Yamaha did not push the limits again in Q2. However, Italian Niccolò Canepa, German Marvin Fritz and Czech Karel Hanika will tackle the 24 Hours of Le Mans from pole position on Saturday at 3am. The defending champions, led by Austrian Mandy Kainz, started the new season well.

In an uneven second qualifying, in which only a few pilots were able to improve their times from the previous day, there were several changes in position behind the YART Yamaha. In particular, the 17-time world champions from Yoshimura SERT Motul (Gregg Black, Etienne Masson, Dan Linfoot) put in a lot of effort. The Suzuki trio stormed to second on the grid ahead of last year’s winners FCC TSR Honda France with Josh Hook, Mike di Meglio and Alan Techer.

The Honda Viltaïs Racing Team (Florian Alt, Steven Odendaal, Leandro Mercado) lost two places, but managed to keep the BMW World Endurance team with Ukrainian Ilya Mikhalchik, French Sylvain Guintoli and German Markus Reiterberger at a distance. The fact that the BMW team could not be found further forward is also due to the fact that Reiterberger fell in his ranks and could no longer interfere in the hunt for times.

Behind these five places, which are rewarded with additional points – 5 points for the pole and one point under each – Kawasaki Webike Trickstar (Gregory Leblanc, Christian Gamarino, Roman Ramos), Tati Beringer (Hugo Clere, Randy Krummenacher, Corentin Peolari) , KM99 (Jeremy Guarnoni, Florian Marino, Randy de Puniet) and National Honda Motos (Guillaume Raymond, Sebastien Suchet, Valentin Suchet), leading the close production class of Superstock and Bolliger Switzerland (Nico Thöni, Pedro Romero, Alex Toledo) .

Max Schmidt put another talent test on the test motorcycle from Metiss-JBB, which has a steering chassis and where the engine has already covered an impressive 40,000 km. The German, who caught the eye by finishing tenth in his group, clearly left behind his experienced team-mates despite only being 20 years old. Of the German drivers, only Fritz (YART), Alt (Viltaïs) and Reiterberger (BMW World Endurance) were faster than him.

Zeittraining, Q1 and Q2
1. YART Yamaha, 1:34.868 minutes 2. Yoshimura SERT Motul, 1:35.177. 3. FCC TSR Honda France, 1:35.223. 4. Honda Viltaïs, 1:35.353. 5. BMW World Endurance, 1:35.397. 6. Kawasaki Webike Trickstar, 1:35.886. 7. Tati Beringer, 1:36.024. 8. KM99, 1:36.086. 9. National Motos Honda, 1:37.177 (1st Superstock). 10. Bolliger Kawasaki Switzerland, 1:37.215. Also: 11th Tecmas MRP BMW, 1:37.255 (2nd Superstock). 10. 15. Motobox Kremer, 1:38.096.