24 Hours of Le Mans Motorcycle Race - Q2: Yamaha narrowly secures pole position at Le Mans

Yart-Yamaha narrowly secured pole position for the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans against BMW at the Bugatti circuit.

Published 17/04/2026 à 13:40

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24 Hours of Le Mans Motorcycle Race – Q2: Yamaha narrowly secures pole position at Le Mans

The battle for pole position at the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans promised to be a close one between BMW and Yamaha on the Bugatti circuit. While the #37 BMW showed strong resistance in Q2, it is the #1 Yamaha from the Iwata factory that will start at the front of the pack for the 49th edition this Saturday.

As a reminder, in motorcycle endurance racing, the two qualifying sessions (Q1 and Q2) are divided into four 20-minute sessions, where the riders of each team are grouped according to the color of their armband (blue, yellow, red, and green). Pole position is determined by the average of the two best lap times of the riders on each motorcycle.

This Friday, each driver therefore had one last opportunity to improve the time set the day before, in an attempt to improve the average set by their crew the day before.

In this session, Karel Hanika (blue) set the fastest time with a 1:34.267, a new absolute track record for the 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle race. Later, Marvin Fritz (yellow) posted a time of 1:34.403, which virtually guaranteed YART its third consecutive pole position at Le Mans.

Because behind, while Markus Reiterberger (blue) had placed the No. 37 31 thousandths of a second behind Karel Hanika, his BMW teammate, Michael van der Mark (red) set a time of 1:34.273 which allowed him to be the fastest of the red drivers, but not to steal the throne from Iwata, who remains ahead by only 33 thousandths of a second.

Behind the two favorites, Naomichi Uramoto propelled the #76 BMW to maintain its position on the front row of the starting grid. The team was further aided by the problems encountered by the #5 Honda, which experienced technical difficulties with a fuel leak, followed by a crash for Alan Techer. The KM99 team, fielding the Yamaha ridden by Randy de Puniet, also gained a position thanks to Honda's misfortunes, securing 4th place in the combined standings of the two sessions. Despite Corentin Perolari's excellent time among the yellow riders, FCC TSR Honda France qualified only 5th on the grid.

This session was the only one scheduled for Friday for the 60 machines entered in the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle race. Now, the teams will carry out a series of technical checks before the double-round-the-clock race, which will start at 15:00 p.m. this Saturday.