French riders Julien Da Costa, Gregory Leblanc and Olivier Four took their Kawasaki ZX-10R to a nail-biting victory in the 76th Bol d'Or 24-hour endurance race at Magny-Cours last weekend - the first for Kawasaki in 15 years.
The Team Kawasaki SRC No.11 machine qualified second and, despite treacherous weather conditions, Da Costa managed to stay in touch with early leader Vincent Phillipe's SERT Suzuki GSX-R1000 in the early stages.
As the long day wore on into night, the spectators were treated to a head-to-head battle between the two top teams that will go down in Bol d'Or history, and saw them less than 30 seconds apart after 22 hours of racing!
Finally, the Kawasaki pulled out a tenuous lead in the last hour to come home 1min40sec ahead of the Suzuki after 781 laps - that's 3268.48km - of racing, including 26 pit stops at a an average of less than a minute each.
Third was the Monster-backed Yamaha Austria Racing Team's R1, five laps down.
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