DGSPORT HEROCK claims a hard fought 4th place

DGSPORT HEROCK raced to a fourth place in Superstock class (8th general) at the Qatar round of the Endurance World Championship at the Losail International Circuit last week. As expected the team had to come to grips with the extremely high temperatures all week, which was hard on the machines but even harder on all team members as they are not used to these conditions. All practices and qualifying were held in the evening to avoid the heat, which meant a series of short nights for all people involved.

Olivier Aerts – Team manager:

“The team is really happy with this result as it was a very tough week. During the unofficial free practice on Wednesday we broke two engines, because of the bad fuel here in Qatar combined with the high outside temperature (43° degrees). So we had to play it safe with the last new engine that we had to use for practice, qualifying and the 8 Hours race. We modified our engine mapping to avoid any overheating and therefore took off some precious horsepower which made the battle against our opponents even harder because of the long straight and the acceleration required exiting the fast corners on the Losail circuit. Because of this we lost almost a second a lap.

This was frustrating for our three riders, but it was a necessary pain to make sure that we would finish the race and I want to thank them for pushing every lap on getting the maximum out of the package, which was clearly not the best this race.

At the end our strategy worked out, as we found a good pace and we had a lower fuel consumption which allowed us to skip one pitstop. Being consistent on lap times we almost reached the podium, just missing out by a small margin. These points are important for the championship.

Our YEC Parts equipped R1 did an excellent job because we were the first Yamaha to finish the race, beating two EWC bikes in the process!

The team performed really well during the week and our team spirit proved to be an extra motivation for riders and team members once again! Now the crates have been packed again to be shipped back to the workshop where everything will be prepared for the 8 Hours of Oschersleben which will take place on the 11th of August.

Thanks to our consistency we are now second in the Endurance World Cup standings with 40 points.”

Quatar 8 Hours Results: 1 BMW Motorrad France (BMW) 226 laps, 2 Bolliger Team Switzerland (Kawasaki) 223, 3 Honda TT Legends (Honda) 222, 4 SERT (Suzuki GSX-R1000) 222, 5 QERT (Suzuki GSX-R1000) 220, 6 Motors Events AMT (Suzuki GSX-R1000) 219, 7 Penz 13 (BMW) 219, 8 DGSport Herock (Yamaha) 218, 9 Maco Racing Team (Yamaha) 216, 10 Atomic Motorsport (Suzuki GSX-R1000) 215.

Championship Points (after 2 rounds): 1 Penz13 52 points, 2 DGSPORT HEROCK 40, 3 3D Endurance 40, 4 Atomic Moto Sport 34, 5 Motors Events 33