Endurance race in Oschersleben

Last weekend I worked in my second World Endurance Championship race with the Qatar Endurance Team, this time in the 8 hours of Oschersleben in Germany. The riders were Anthony West, Alex Cudlin and Mashel Al Naimi.

The race went quite well and we finished in second position in the Superstock category, just 20 seconds behind the winners, the Penz13 German team.
20 seconds for an 8 hours race is really close. The race was very exciting, a 8 hours sprint. Our team was leading the Superstock category for several hours and we also were third in the general for a long time.

I think I learnt many things about Endurance on this race. Next (and last) round will be in September, the 24 hours of Le Mans.
In Germany I saw several cool bikes from other theams, like these GMT94 and YART Yamahas. It is always interesting to look at these bikes because they are full of interesting details.

There were other categories racing there, like sidecars.

And also the Supermono category, full of very interesting prototypes. I always have been very interested on these bikes together with the Battle of the Twins category. Small teams design, build and race their bikes. It has a lot of merit.

This is the bike of the very young builder Maarten Janssens, with its characteristic transverse rear shock.

I saw the bike a couple of times but I didn’t find him to have a chat. ¡Maarten, you built a very interesting bike, my hat’s off to you!