This weekend the third and penultimate round of the 2015 Endurance World Championship takes place at Oschersleben in Germany. The Honda Endurance Racing team is aiming for victory after winning the race last year with its trio of endurance experts, Julien Da Costa, Freddy Foray and Sébastien Gimbert aboard the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP.
The previous round saw the Honda Racing squad finish in seventh place and was one of three permanent EWC teams to finish in the top-ten. The crew and riders know what it takes to win at Oschersleben after leading last year’s race from the first lap to the chequered flag, so are even more determined to prove their winning capability again.
Qualifying for the Oschersleben 8 Hours takes place on Thursday and Friday, with the race starting at 12:00 (GMT+1) on Saturday 22 August.
Oschersleben 8 Hours schedule
Thursday 20 August
11:30-13:30 Free Practice
15:30-16:50 Qualifying 1 (20 minutes per rider)
Friday 21 August
15:10-16:30 Qualifying 2 (20 minutes per rider)
19:30-21:00 Pit walk
Saturday 22 August
09:00-09:45 Warm up
12.00 Race start
20.00 Race ends
Julien Da Costa
We are confident after Suzuka’s positive outing which was very important for us. We won the Oschersleben race last year so this makes us feel confident as well. I really hope that we’ll be able to fight for the victory; the CBR performs well at Oschersleben, we have all the assets to be able to win this race, so now we just have to make it happen.
Freddy Foray
I am really looking forward to racing again because we don’t have many races in the Endurance World championship and I miss it a lot between races. Suzuka was tough but positive for the team and now I’m just looking forward to getting back on top at Oschersleben. We won there last year, so we hope we’ll be able to get our first victory of the year again.
Sébastien Gimbert
Winning last year at Oschersleben is promising for this year – it helps us arrive with a bit more confidence. Last year things went really well, we had a great race and what we all want for Oschersleben this year is to enjoy renewed success. At Suzuka the CBR was really reliable, our last two races went pretty well, now I think we have to demonstrate our competitiveness in the world championship and to try to be in front of the other permanent teams in order to score more points. Oschersleben is a track that I like a lot and where I’ve always been successful because it suits well my riding style. One of our strongest points remains our rider line-up, the Fireblade is great and I think we’re on the right track to win again this year.
