The Honda Endurance Racing team took part in encouraging free practice and first qualifying sessions at the 3.667km Oschersleben circuit in Germany.
Honda’s endurance specialists Julien Da Costa, Freddy Foray and Sébastien Gimbert are taking part in the third and penultimate Endurance World Championship round in which the squad qualified on provisional seventh place on-board the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP with an average lap time of 1’27.970.
The first rider to get out on track was Da Costa who got the seventh best time in 1’27.966. Then Gimbert made his best lap time in 1’27.868 and finished fifth in his session. Finally Foray who crashed out, unhurt, finished in fifth position with a best lap time of 1’28.076.
The Honda Endurance Racing team finished seventh out of 36 teams. The team worked on the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP’s set-up to get prepared for the race and the crew is taking positive from today’s results. The second qualifying sessions will start at 15:10 (GMT+1) on Friday 21 August and will be followed by the pit walk at 19:30.
Julien Da Costa
We do not have the same feeling as last year on the bike, but in spite of this we improved the CBR’s performances session after session. We would like to be more at the front so we still have to work hard because our aim here is to appear as the favourite. We’ll continue to work on the bike and then things will get better for tomorrow.
Freddy Foray
Regarding the race-pace this result is quite good, we are consistent in our lap times, but something is still missing. I made a slight mistake and crashed out during my qualifying session, I am sorry for the team - now I hope that tomorrow we’ll find a good solution to get ready for the race.
Sébastien Gimbert
We worked a lot on the bike’s set-up today, we still have a few chattering issues, so I think that we are able to be much faster. When I was on track there was a lot of traffic, but I think that tomorrow we’ll feel more comfortable and we’ll be able to let go a little bit more. I am happy that Freddy walked out uninjured after his crash, now let’s hope that tomorrow we’ll get a bigger smile on our faces.