It was major achievement from Gilles Stafler’s team to rebuild two fully kitted race bikes in only 10 days to enter this German event.

Reaching the circuit of Oschersleben Team Kawasaki SRC and their riders worked tirelessly to finalise their set ups. All this hard work paid off, as Gregory Leblanc, Matthieu Lagrive and Fabien Forêt started by placing the Kawasaki #11 second on the starting grid. After a great start from Gregory Leblanc and the fastest race lap logged by Fabien Forêt (1'27.480) , the Team Kawasaki SRC were engaged in an arm wrestling match against team SERT with one objective; the victory.
However, fate once again dealt SRC a cruel blow. After 2h40 of racing and battling with SERT on track, Matthieu Lagrive came back to the pits with a feared broken engine. After inspection it was proved to be a loose valve.

Team Bolliger Kawasaki also had a frustrating Oschersleben 8 Hours event. After a good start from P8 on the grid they managed to keep their speed and were in fifth at the half way mark. Unfortunately, their engine became too hot and they had to refill with coolant. On the outlap, Horst Saiger had a highside and crashed. They got the bike back into the pit, fixed the damage and rejoined the race again in 26th position. The three riders, Roman Stamm, Horst Saiger and Nicolas Salchaud tried their best to score as many points as possible to finish in 18th position, tenth out of the EWC regulars. Despite their misfortunes the team retains third in the series.

Gilles Stafler, Team Kawasaki SRC team manager
"This is really bad news to have stopped after all the hard work done by the team in such a short notice to be competitive for Oschersleben. This is the first time we have ever encountered this kind of mechanical problem. It's even more of a pity because as we had the pace for victory".


The next rendez-vous for Team Kawasaki SRC and Bolliger is the Bol d'Or on the Castellet race track, 19th and 20th of September, last round of the FIM EWC World Championship.