24H MOTOS: TOP 5 FOR KENNOL AND PLAYERS
Team PLAYERS and KENNOL clinch a Superstock Top 5 in the mythical 24h Motos of the FIM Endurance World Championship, ahead of many official teams! The French team finishes 13th overall, and can now prepare the rest of the 2021 season on this strong basis. With maybe a brand new motor oil to be unveiled, in a few weeks, for the Endurance teams.
▌DAVID VS. GOLIATH
In the World of motorbikes, there are many legends. The Isle of Man TT, the Bol d’Or, Dakar… But the most mythical one remains the 24h Motos, at Le Mans, France. And for a first in this competition, KENNOL is of course partnering with a French team. Team PLAYERS is a young organization, with great goals. Based in Britanny, the team focuses on consistency and reliability. Which perfectly matches KENNOL’s philosophy in terms of lubes development. Development program that actually includes a future motorbike engine oil, to enter the KENNOL ULTIMA range of high-performance products.
Team PLAYERS knows its stuff. And even if new and small, they have faith in the values of endurance racing. In a 24h race, anything can happen, and you’d better be prepared to any kind of event. If you eliminate most of the mechanical issues that can happen, it’s a 1st step to success. And working on the mechanical reliability has been a key for this 2021 edition, against the big official teams. The Championship is divided into 2 categories:
— EWC for the official teams, racing on heavily modified motorbikes
— Superstock, which only includes motorbikes identical to the production ones, apart from several small customizations
And on a track like Circuit Bugatti (Le Mans, France), the difference between the 2 categories is easily seen… The pole position was in 1.35.805 this year, by team YART (official Yamaha team), while PLAYERS qualified in P34 (out of 47 entries, including 17 EWC), with an official time of 1.41.158. How can they compete with such a difference in raw performance? Strategy, and reliability.
▌CONSISTENCY IN PERFORMANCE
The better example of the high reliability of the #156 Kawasaki ZX-10R is the time spent in the pits, during the race: 45.38.686 in total. This is the 6th best result overall. Better reliability than most official teams! But what does this data tells us too?
If you take this 5sec353 gap of performance by lap, and multiply it by the 855 laps the winning team covered in this 2021 edition, you end up with a result of 4577 seconds. Divided by this 1.35.805 lap time, it gives us 47 laps. Which happens to be, very precisely, more than the 45 laps gap between KENNOL-sponsored #156 bike and the winner, on the finish line, after 24 hours of race.
This figures tell one thing: with no difference in pure category performance, Team PLAYERS would’ve finished in the same lap (or better) than the winner, fighting for the victory. That’s how performant the team has been, how consistent the bike stood, how reliable the engine was.
Photos: Les Shoots d’Élo
