2024 FIM EWC Round 2 — 8 Hours of Spa | Private Practice Report (June 6)
Around eight hours of running in the all-team private practice. Mixing short stints with long runs, the team refined its setup with qualifying and the race in mind.
The second round of the 2024 FIM Endurance World Championship (EWC), the 8 Hours of Spa. Team Étoile ran on Monday’s TRACK DAY, but for most entrants the running is the three days from Thursday to Saturday.
The official sessions are only the two days of Friday and Saturday, but in the private practice that all teams took part in, regular riders Yudai Kamei, Hikari Okubo and Kazuki Watanabe worked on refining the setup.
With about eight hours of running available — 2 hours 55 minutes in the morning and 4 hours 55 minutes in the afternoon — the team did both short-lap running and long runs with qualifying and the race in mind, but not all of the setup is settled yet.
On Friday there’s two hours of free practice in the morning, and in the afternoon qualifying 1 and 2 — qualifying finishes that day — so tomorrow the team wants to use the morning running to get a little more familiar with Spa-Francorchamps and sharpen the bike’s setup.
Rider comments
Rider
Yudai Kamei
“My own form is improving and I’m finding where the setup should land, but I’m struggling because I can’t ride it well enough myself. It’s not that the pace is slow, but my times aren’t consistent, so I want to think hard about what I can do as a rider and keep working.”
“In tomorrow morning’s running I want to sharpen the setup a bit more and push toward qualifying and the race. A lot depends on the session, so I’ll proceed without putting too much pressure on myself.”
Rider
Hikari Okubo
“I couldn’t run much on Monday’s track day, but this time I was able to run a lot. Through trial and error I think the bike setup settled in a good place. Red flags meant we couldn’t do long runs, but we could test things like what times we can do on used tyres and how far we can go, so I think it was good running.”
“Tomorrow is qualifying, but I think it’s fine for me to trust my team-mates and use my time to make sure I can lay down a solid average pace in the race. In the two-hour free practice I want the three of us to come together nicely and get into the top group in qualifying; and since the race is what matters, I’ll do my best with what I can do.”
Rider
Kazuki Watanabe
“Today the running time was long, so the clear issues are becoming clearer, but this race week gives the impression of too little time with few sessions. In the SST class there are parts where you keep using the same tyres for two or three stints, so I also feel the difficulty that not everyone necessarily rides in the same condition.”
“Tomorrow there’s two hours of running in the morning, so I want to use that time to the full to balance things within the team, between the riders, and on the bike itself, and raise the level of completion a little more. As it’s an endurance race I don’t place that much importance on qualifying position, but I want to finish the day without crashing and prepare for the race.”
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