Aussie Josh Hook with F.C.C. TSR Honda France takes FIM Endurance World Championship.
Bol d’Or 2022 – FIM Endurance World Championship
Viltaïs Racing Igol won the 100th-anniversary Bol d’Or 24hr leaving F.C.C. TSR Honda France to claim the FIM Endurance World Championship from 4th position after 24 hours of intense racing at Circuit Paul Ricard over the weekend.
F.C.C. TSR Honda France’s title success comes after another action-packed EWC season, and makes Australian Josh Hook a 2 time FIM EWC world champion!
Viltaïs Racing Igol’s maiden EWC victory was an impressive display of riding from trio Florian Alt (Germany), Erwan Nigon (France) and Steven Odendaal (South Africa), and also reserve rider James Westmoreland (Great Britain).
Aussie Ant West, with the help of his team, was able to bring the Maco Racing Team Yamaha home in 6th position.
This latest win gives four race wins to four different teams. This and the fact that EWC qualifying and race lap records at Circuit Paul Ricard were broken by Illya Mykhalchyk (1m51.641s) and Xavi Forés (1m52.979s) show how competitive the series has become.
Race Winners
ERC Endurance-Ducati had a comfortable lead and were on course for victory until the final 90 minutes when a mechanical failure forced retirement from the race. That left Wójcik Racing Team in the lead until the Polish squad’s Yamaha also suffered mechanical issues, forcing Mathieu Gines to enter the pitlane for repairs. Losing more than five minutes and handing the lead to the next Yamaha team.
Wójcik Racing Team’s second place was still a season highlight with Webike SRC Kawasaki France taking third, their first podium in 2022.
“This race has been incredible.” said Steven Odendaal (Viltaïs Racing Igol) “To be in a French team winning on French soil is just something amazing. Yannick Lucot, my team boss, had a really big dream of this day and my team-mates and I, we fulfilled this so we’re really, really happy with this victory. Obviously we did not expect this, we just knew we had to make everything the maximum and we just did this and finally we’ve got this big trophy, which is amazing, and I’m really happy to walk away with my first EWC podium being a victory.”
FIM EWC world champions!
F.C.C. TSR Honda France, a team of skilled riders, Mike Di Meglio and Aussie Josh Hook joined on the #5 Honda by Alan Techer in place of injured Gino Rea who are now all FIM Endurance World Championship title holders.
“I know from the past never to think the race is over until the chequered flag.” said Aussie Josh Hook (F.C.C. TSR Honda France). “We’ve come back from much worse situations and won races in the past. We did run into some dramas as everyone else did it seems. We never gave up on it and just kept chipping away. We did a lot of really good race runs all throughout the night and we were consistently fast all three of us. Basically we were going to see where we were at when the sun came up in the morning but we never counted the win out at all. But it came to a point in time when we had to toss up whether we focused on the championship, which is obviously our main objective, or the race win. We decided to take care of the engine after getting a little nervous and seeing everyone else’s bikes blowing up and there wasn’t many left in the end. We tried to be as conservative as possible and just bring home the championship for our team, Honda and all our partners.”
Defending champion Yoshimura SERT Motul placed second in the final championship order with Viltaïs Racing Igol third. All results are subject to final confirmation.
Aussie – Aussie – Aussie!
Besides our very own Josh Hook taking his second FIM Endurance World Championship title, Aussie Ant West, with team mates Enzo Boulom and Baiint Kovac bring the #14 Maco Racing Team Yamaha home in 6th position.
“It didn’t go smoothly for us though.” said Ant “I did the running start from 15th and managed to get us to 10th, My 2 team mates were riding really strong. Unfortunately we had a tyre issue that put us back to 34th. We all pushed very hard to get back to 8th maybe pushing a little hard and one team mate crashed. Putting us back to 18th at 3am in the morning. (We) lost all hope of having a decent result with the Maco racing team. this was my 5th endurance race with the team and we have had a string of bad luck and I didn’t see us making top 10 after this crash. But as always the mechanics put the bike back together faster then I could get my suit and helmet on. after a few more hours of riding at a safe pace we started to see a chance of maybe 12th or 10th place. We all started to pick up the pace again with a 2nd wind to push hard again we started to see top 10 was definitely a reality. We don’t have the fastest motorcycle on the grid but one thing you can count on with the Maco Yamaha R1 the motor won’t stop and it never missed a beat all 24 hours. hats off to the entire team for their efforts.”
Visit fimewc.com for official race results.