Taree’s Damian Cudlin suffered a title chase set back in the second round of the World Endurance Championships at the LeMans 24hour race in France over the weekend.

After scoring a solid 3^rd place podium finish at Assen just a week earlier, Cudlin was in a positive mood heading into the event however luck was not on the young Aussie’s side on race day.

Teamed with Warwick Nowland and Christer Minnin for the event, Cudlin qualified 10^th for the start but during the mornings Warm Up session a faulty handlebar broke on the Phase One Yamaha and caused Cudlin to crash heavily.

“It wasn’t a real good start to the day, put it that way.” Cudlin said.

“You never want to spend a warm up session in the gravel, especially before the start of a 24hour race!”

Luckily Cudlin escaped serious injury and was fit for the start of the race.

“The Phase One team did a great job in fixing the bike in time for the start, as it was it was pretty wrecked after my crash.” Cudlin explained. “But unfortunately our day was to get even worse.”

After making a strong start, Nowland sat in 10^th position after his first hour long rotor before pitting slightly early with a brake problem. 3 laps into Cudlin’s first stint and the team where forced to pit and replace the entire front brake system which had stopped working completely.

Dropping to 52^nd place in the pit’s, the Phase One team charged through the pack to be in 8^th place by the 12 hour mark.

Then an overheating engine forced the team to pit again and replace the radiator, losing almost 19 minutes in the process.

“It was hard to watch us slip down the order again after all that work. The team were frantically working on the bike as I just watched everyone riding around.”

Finally at 4.30am, after successfully replacing the radiator, the team were forced to retire with engine problems caused by the overheating.

“It was hard to take. 14 hours of racing went down the drain and we didn’t score any points towards the championship, so obviously everyone was disappointed.” Cudlin said.

“But that’s racing. You win some, you lose some. Now we have to regroup and get our championship back on track with a strong result in Spain.”

Cudlin slipped from 3^rd to 9^th in the World Championship Standings but will rejoin the series at the next round at Albacete, Spain in three weeks time.