24-Hour Kawasakis
Endurance racing is an insane pursuit, and yet a very sensible method of proving a motorcycle’s high-speed, long-distance credentials. Kawasaki were not slow to appreciate this
Nearly every nation has a motorcycle sport that defines it. In the US of A it’s the nitroburning lunacy of top fuel drag racing, we in Britain and Ireland (and the Isle Of Man) enjoy the continued, unfettered existence of real roads racing. In the high latitudes of Finland, ice racing. In Europe, and for the French in particular, it’s 24- hour endurance racing.
Let’s remind ourselves just how nuts the endurance game is. First, it’s the only form of racing where a track invasion used to be the accepted means of ending a race. 180mph motorbikes, 50,000 people, yeah, OK then. Second, why put yourself through the undoubted pain and hardship of this when there are other, shorter races available? Frenchman Gustave Lefevre won the Bol d’Or seven times on Nortons (a record that stood until French endurance ace Vincent Phillipe won his eighth Bol in 2019, on a Suzuki for the eighth time too). Lefevre won four of his riding solo. Yes, 24-hours in the saddle, flat out, only stopping for fuel (if all goes well).
His last solo win was in 1953 on a Manx Norton, before the authorities decreed there be two-rider teams (until 1977, when three became the preferred number). Old Gustave must have been either relieved (or most likely gutted) when he had to share a bike with fellow Frenchman George Briand for his last two wins in 1956 and ’57.
Honda were the first of the big Japanese factories to get into European endurance racing. They triumphed in the 1969, 1972 and ’73 Bols d’Or with CB750-derived race bikes ridden by French pairing Michel Rougerie and Daniel Urdich in ’69, by Gérard Debrock and Roger Ruiz in ’72, then with Debrock and Thierry Tchernine in ’73 on a CB969, entered by the French Honda importers, Japauto. Kawasaki did not mount the rostrum steps until the factory got semi-serious about endurance racing. Their first foray was in 1973 when they supplied Yoshimura-tuned Z1 engines to Kawasaki teams for the Bol (held until 1977 on the Le Mans Bugatti circuit, until it switched to Paul Ricard for ’78). The four Kawasakis that finished came in second, fourth, fifth and seventh. Not a bad debut.
For 1974 things became even more serious. Frenchmen Alain Genoud and Georges Godier had been campaigning an Egli-Honda in endurance races with some success. Sidemm, the French Kawasaki importer headed by the far-sighted Xavier Maugendre, gave the duo a budget (and a free hand) to build a Z
