Podium delight for Rea at first round of endurance championship at Le Mans 24 hour race

BY GILES SPENCER
giles@slpmedia.co.uk

Tooting born motorcycle racer, Gino Rea, finished on the podium in the opening round of the FIM Endurance World Championship at Le Mans in France last weekend.

The 32 year old, who made the switch from the Buildbase Suzuki team in the British Superbike Championship in 2021 to the factory F.F.C. TSR Honda France team in the Endurance World Championship for this season, got off to a good start by helping the team qualify third on the grid for the 24 hour race.

Team mate, Mike di Meglio took the first shift, securing second place before Rea took over further promoting the team to the number one spot.

Increasing the lead to three seconds before handing over to third rider, Josh Hook, the Australian further stretched their lead to keep the team at the top of table after eight hours of racing.

Costly pit stops to fix a gear selector issue, then a broken silencer on the Honda CBR1000RR-R dropped the team to third and a crash for Rea in the final quarter of the race briefly dropped them off the podium whilst the damage was fixed but they were soon back in the hunt to take the flag for the final step of the podium in third, 14 laps behind the winning Yoshimura SERT Motul Suzuki team with YART Yamaha Official Team EWC in second.

A delighted Rea said, “It was definitely a great start to the season to start with a podium with the TSR Honda team. ”

“It started off really well; we led the race for eight hours and in EWC you get points for leading the race for the first eight hours so we got the first points of the season.

“We were really strong in qualifying, we got points for that also.

“Unfortunately, we had some technical issues after that eighth hour of leading which basically sent us back to third and we were about four laps behind.

“From then onwards we weren’t able to catch the leaders but the pace this year is so competitive and so close between the factories that we would have to minimise mistakes.

“To still salvage a podium after the difficulties we had is a brilliant start and we showed that we have really good pace in qualifying and the race and we can fight for the win.

“Really nice to start the journey with Honda like that.

“Very happy with the bike and the team; we still have a few things to work on but it was a positive start and hopefully it’s a sign of good things to come. We’ve scored very good points for the championship and we’re still in the title hunt”

The result leaves the team in third place in the FIM EWC on 49 points.

The championship heads to Belgium for the Spa 24 hour on the 2-5th June.

Photos: http://frankmillet.com/