John McGuinness consolidated his second place in the Endurance World Championship on Saturday when, alongside team-mates Cameron Donald and Jason O'Halloran, he took fourth place on the Honda TT Legends machine at Oschersleben, Germany. The team were on the pace throughout qualifying and they were rewarded in the 8 Hour race with a top four finish to ensure they go into the final round next month still in with a great chance of claiming the World Championship.
After the first qualifying session, the three riders were within one second of each other but it was John who was fastest at 1m27.739s to place him third in his group and the trio ended the day in fifth overall. During second and final qualifying, it was O’Halloran’s turn to shine and with Donald also improving his time, the combined average of each rider’s best lap from the two sessions – 1m28.053s – meant they lined up in fifth place on the grid.
O’ Halloran started the race for the team although a dramatic first hour saw the safety car deployed whilst three of the Honda TT Legends’ rivals – YART, Team Bolliger and QERT – all lost time. With two of their main EWC rivals out of the running for a top five position, John, O’Halloran and Donald pushed hard for the next seven hours and although they briefly lost time in the sixth hour, they were able to bring the Honda Fireblade home in fourth place. The result leaves the team joint second in the championship, tied with BMW on 76 points, with just the final round at Le Mans in September remaining.
Speaking afterwards, a pleased John said, “We pushed hard in the race and we’ve made a lot of progress this year, getting closer to the front runners at each and every round. Right from the off we were on the pace and when I got ‘P3’ in first qualifying I thought my throttle must have got stuck or something! I found a really good set up and rhythm and after the test we head here earlier in the year, I was able to hit the ground running. I got caught in a lot of traffic in second qualifying but our combined times got us closer to the front and where we wanted to be so it set us up nicely for the race.”
“We had no issues at all with the bike in the race and it was pretty much the perfect race. Anything can happen in an eight hour race but all our pit stops were good and none of us made any mistakes so to finish fourth was very pleasing. Cam and Jason did a great job again as did all the team and whilst it was a bit frustrating not to step on the podium, we gave it 100% and have put ourselves in with a great chance of becoming World Champions.”
John now returns to National Superstock 1000cc Championship duty when he contests the next round at Cadwell Park on August 25-27.
Picture by Honda Racing
