EPIC HIGHS, GRUELLING ORDEAL
24-hour Le Mans race pushes limits of riders and motorcycles
LE MANS, FRANCE “I’m listening to Back in Black by AC/DC,” legendary long-distance motorcycle racer Gregory Leblanc says with a grin as he sits shielded from the unseasonably hot sun cooking the starting grid. Given what he is about to endure, the band’s Highway to Hell might be more apt.
The roll call of extreme sporting events (such as the Dakar, Marathon des Sables and Vendee Globe) created by the French is impressive. They are all breakers of minds, bodies and equipment. One beneath the radar in most places — except France — is the Le Mans 24 Hours. It’s not the famous car race, but its infinitely more brutal two-wheeled cousin, called Le 24 Heures Motos, which was April 21 to 22.
It is this race Leblanc is poised to start. For a day and a night, buzzing like demented flies caught in a fish tank, 60 bikes, each ridden by three riders, will lap every 90 seconds or so until they have broken down, crashed or completed about 850 laps.
I’m with the Honda Endurance Racing team. The boss is a man with a sportingly familiar name, Jonny Twelvetrees, brother of former England rugby player Billy.
“I’d love to be out there competing but I love my job and if I can help the team perform to its best then that is as rewarding as being the athlete,” he says before the race.
Soon any talk is drowned out by a combination of two Rafael jets, La Marseillaise and the roar of packed stands. The first riders have to sprint in full leathers and helmets the 20 metres across the track to their steeds. Padded up, they look like charging football running backs. Men and machines married up, 60 engines ignite and all jet noise, anthems and fans are muffled by screaming exhausts.
As a works team, Honda is a favourite. A podium is the plan, the hope. But early on Saturday evening, a sixth of the way into the race, they are in 38th place. The Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP2 (similar to the Fireblade road bike) sits in the pits for valuable minutes amid a landscape of furrowed engineering brows.
“A fault code has come up but it doesn’t say what the fault is,” reports one of the engineers. It has effectively turned the bike from the digital to the analog age. Traction control and all the gizmos that are as common to a modern bike as iPhones and grunts are to a teenager, aren’t working.
Leblanc’s dreams of a record sixth win are evaporating. But he, co-riders Erwan Nigon and Sebastien Gimbert, are like the Three Musketeers. Not quite one for all and all for one but an equally powerful statement of intent comes from the trio.
“Me and my teammates, we are strong men,” Leblanc declares. “We push. We crash or we go to the podium.”
In the car race the drivers do two- to three-hour stints between pit stops. So their rest periods are four to six hours. Bikes have smaller tanks, so the rotations are more frequent. That makes rest breaks shorter and the cumulative fatigue much worse.
“Most riders don’t sleep at all, or maybe a few minutes on the massage table,” says physiotherapist Jason Garibal. “Tiredness is the biggest challenge. Hydration, regular small meals (chicken, rice and pasta) and massage are the only things to help the riders.”
An estimated quarter of a million bike fans have come to Le Mans. Enduring the race as a fan is a very different fight. No chicken and pasta for those camping in the Zone Bleu. Beer and cider are the sustenance of choice for many spectators.
It is very Mad Max. A plume of smoke from campfires and two-metre high homemade bike exhausts throwing flames high into the night sky. We are recommended not to go into the fan fest alone or say we are English. But we escape unscathed.
Unlike a comparable team in the car race, the bike teams operate in a more low-key way. One truck is parked behind the pits and is a temporary dorm for the riders, a physio space and a shower. The mechanics have camp chairs in which to doze. Few do, though. The result, by dawn, is a gaggle of red-eyed pallid faces.
“For the riders, this is the most dangerous time,” says Erwan Nigon. “No one falls asleep riding, but mistakes are normal when you are tired.”
Prophetically, within minutes, number 94, leading almost since the start 15 hours earlier, crashes. The Three Musketeers’ go-hardor-go-home attitude has put them in fifth with a third of the race still to run. The perfume of petrol, oil, hot rubber and stale sweat is helpfully energizing.
In the time it takes to binge watch nearly three seasons of Game of Thrones, a sister bike from Honda France is first to cross the line and win the 2018 Le Mans 24 Heures Motos.
Gregory has missed out on a record sixth win by one place, but no one is disappointed. From 38th to second is a gargantuan effort and makes Twelvetrees’ boys instant legends.
The thin membrane holding in tiredness and emotion fractures. The burly Brit has to hold back tears as he embraces his team and troops off to the podium for a slurp of — and a shower in — champagne.