Source: Supplied.

There were no fewer than seven teams within the same second after the first set of qualifying sessions on Thursday at the Oschersleben 8 Hours, Germany, during round three of the FIM Endurance World Championship.

In the end it was the Monster Energy Yamaha Yamaha Austria Racing Team (YART) team including Australia’s Broc Parkes that clocked the best time.

Riders did individual qualifying sessions during the afternoon, grid places being assigned on the basis of the average of the best times of the riders in each team.

Markus Reiterberger, BMW Motorrad France Team Penz13.com’s ultra-fast rider, lapped the best time at 1m26.386s, however the average of the best times of the three riders dropped the team to fifth place in the day’s standings.

Monster Energy Yamaha YART, on the other hand, performed consistently and its Yamaha of Parkes, Sheridan Morais and Ivan Silva topped the timesheet. An encouraging outcome for the factory team, which was forced to abandon the Suzuka 8 Hours, and is currently languishing at 23rd place in the world championship standings.

Grégory Leblanc, Matthieu Lagrive and Fabien Foret, who were also unlucky in Japan, and are currently fourth in the overall standings, got their SRC Kawasaki to second place, a mere 0.341 second from the leaders.

The reassuring result shows the team’s potential is intact despite having to rebuild two bikes from scratch after several crashes at Suzuka in the short space of time before the race in Germany.

If these two teams keep up their excellent performance, they could throw the championship wide open. Suzuki Endurance Racing Team is currently occupying the top spot, with GMT 94 Yamaha right behind. The factory Suzuki placed third in the qualifying sessions, after Anthony Delhalle had a minor spill at the end while attempting to improve his time.

The other incident at the qualifying sessions was Freddy Foray’s violent crash on the Honda Racing bike; the rider was unharmed, but the bike earmarked for the qualifying sessions was destroyed.

The Völpker NRT 48 & Penz13 by Schubert Motors team put on a great performance, placing their BMW sixth to head the Superstock category ahead of the factory Honda. The Oschersleben-based German team made its endurance world championship debut very recently in 2013.

Australian Alex Cudlin made his return to the EWC as part of the Team April Moto Motors Events Suzuki outfit.

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