LE MANS

Following his successful weekend at Thruxton over the Easter break where he rode to a brace of strong points finishes on the JJL/UK diggers.com Honda Fireblade, Steve travelled to France to compete as part of a three man team for Kawasaki France in the Le Mans 24 hour race. But after just five hours of racing Patrick Piot crashed heavily and the team were subsequently forced to retire.

Qualifying had gone well for the three riders who qualified in fifth place for the start of Saturday’s race and it was Steve who drew the short straw to ride the bike during the first hour.

As the flag dropped the riders scrambled across the track to jump aboard their bikes and get the race underway. Steve didn’t get the best of starts and found himself down in ninth position after being held up in traffic in the early laps.

After the first 15 minutes Steve made a break, moving up into sixth place and by the time he completed his hour in the saddle he was closing in on the leaders and in fourth position.

Piot was next up and then Pere Riba who maintained the fourth place before handing over the controls to Steve for his second 60-minute session. Everything was running smoothly and Steve was able to make further progress to circulate in a comfortable third place. His second session over, Steve brought the bike back to the pits for refuelling, new tyres and a change of rider.

But it all went wrong when Piot crashed heavily at Musee leaving the bike badly damaged. Despite the handicap of a broken hand he managed to push the bike back, very slowly, to the pits where the mechanics set to work in an effort to get the bike up and running.

By the time they got it back into shape the team had lost over 25 laps but Steve opted to go back out and try to make up some ground. But once the bike was struck up Steve realised something was not quite right and reluctantly the team withdrew from the race.

“Although we had lost a lot of time we still had 18 hours or so to race and if we could have continued may have been able to get back on course,” said Steve. “ But the bike was not stable and it would have been too dangerous to go on. It’s a shame because we were running third prior to the crash and ironically the two bikes ahead of us retired later in the night. We could have been looking at a win or at least a podium finish but its no good harping on at what could have been, we will just have to see if we can do better next year!”