Nothing much happens in the World Endurance Championship without IDM riders. The Yamaha Austria Racing Team has been world champion since today, Sunday. The title was decided at the legendary Bol d’Or in Le Castellet. On board: Marvin Fritz, the 2016 IDM Superbike champion. And the current IDM stars are celebrating, too. The BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team finished third overall with Ilya Mikhalchik, Markus Reiterberger, and Jérémy Guarnoni. The gap to the World Championship runner-up and race winner, Yoshimura SERT Motul, was incredibly narrow: just one point. They trail the new world champions from the YART Yamaha Official EWC Team by 21 points.
After 709 laps, the BMW team crossed the finish line in third place. Over the previous 24 hours, the tension had been mounting. After the BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team secured pole position with a new lap record, everything initially went like clockwork. However, an electronics issue set the crew back slightly during the night. But Reiterberger, Mikhalchik, and Guarnoni fought their way back up the standings to secure a podium finish. Additionally, Mikhalchik set the fastest lap of the race in the #37 BMW M 1000 RR with a time of 1:52.898 minutes. Markus Reiterberger also lived up to his reputation. The Obing native ended up driving a double stint. At times, his lap times were three seconds faster than those of the competition in the top 5.
Despite finishing third, there were mixed feelings within the team, which had secured a podium finish in all three 24-hour races of the season with the #37 BMW M 1000 RR. “To be honest: If you’d told me about this result before the season, I would have been pretty happy,” says team manager Werner Daemen, “but now we feel that the title could have been within reach, and then you want more.”
Ilya Mikhalchik looks back and says, “I’m glad we’ve all made great progress since last year, both with the bike and in terms of rider performance and lap times. Everyone has worked hard, and you can see the results. We finished every race, were on the podium on three out of four occasions, and were always fighting for the top positions. Even in Japan, we were just shy of the podium. So we should certainly be happy.”
The Viltais Honda Racing team, featuring IDM title contender Florian Alt, Leandro Mercado, and Steven Odendaal, finished second at Le Castellet and is currently fifth in the overall standings.
