THERE'S still work to do for Old Bar's Josh Hook and fellow FCC TSR Honda France riders Freddy Foray and Mike di Megli when the World Endurance Championship motorcycle series resumes in late August.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Hook and his team-mates will still contest the Le Mans 24 Hour race in France. A reduced field will go out on track for a closed-door race on August 29 and 30.
Two rounds of the championship have been decided, but there's been no racing since December. Hook and company won the title in 2017-2018. However, he admitted 2019/20 has been a difficult campaign. The team sits in 12th place and are well off the pace.
"It's been shocking,'' Hook admitted.
"But we've had a bit of bad luck as well.
"We had a problem in the first 24 hour - the bike blew up. There was nothing anyone could do. It was just unfortunate. We got no points whatsoever in that race and there's a lot of points up for grabs, so that really hurt us.''
The situation didn't improve in the next race in Malaysia.
"Rolling onto the next round...we struggled as well. We were fast through practice and qualifying,'' he said.
However, come race day Hook was laid low with the flu and was unable to ride.
However, the team made a promising start and looked set to record some valuable points. However, disaster struck with two hours to go in the race.
"We made a mistake and crashed,'' Hook said.
"That's all part of it. But again we got minimum points for that race.''
The series was postponed after the second round because of COVID-19 restrictions. Hook has spent most of the year at his Old Bar home, training as much as possible.
Hook acknowledges there'll be no championship this year for this team, even though three rounds are scheduled to complete the series.
However, he added there's work to be done on the bike in the remaining rounds to prepare for 2021.
"It's a new bike we got from Honda this year so we want to make sure the bike's competitive for next year,'' he explained.
"Now we need to make sure we're making progress with the bike.''
Meanwhile Hook is also contesting the MotoE championship for the second successive year.
He finished ninth in the opening race in Spain and was happy with the performance.
"I know the position doesn't seem that good, but we made a massive step with the bike,'' he said.
"For sure we need to improve in E-Pole, if we started from the front three rows we would be in a battle for the podium. We still have a lot of work to do but I'm very confident.''
