MG powers Durango to Le Mans finish.

The Le Mans 24 hour is one of the grueling on the world motorsport calendar, but this past weekend MG XPOWER lasted the distance to take the Durango team to the chequered flag in the French classic.

Starting from the ninth row, after the formation lap and the rolling start, Durango driver Michele Rugolo immediately gained a position, from the eighteenth to the seventeenth. The young Italian driver, at his first time in Le Mans, with the two more expert French drivers Jean-Bernard Bouvet and Sylvain Boulay showed immediately their serious intentions to the competitors and after one hour the Durango PM 02 was already in 15th position, reaching the 12th place during the second hour, maintaining it in the following hour and managing to do three laps in 11th.

And so everything looked good for the team as night fell, and some of the team, who had been flat out working for the week leading up to the event, took the opportunity to gat flat out themselves and catch a few winks of sleep. Fatal. Just as slumber beckoned, so a failed rear wheel bearing took away the chance of sleep.

The problem surfaced around 3am and then took until 7:15 am to get fixed. Understandably the team lost places whilst this happened, but scarce few team have no problems during the 24 hours, so it was not as bad as it could have been.

Jean Bernard Bouvet took the restart for the team from the 30th position. Once again the Durango drivers Michele Rugolo, Sylvain Boulay and Bouvet managed to gain positions, coming home in 25th place.

The car with its extreme reliability showed to have the right to challenge with the best cars of the world. After 24 hours, 22 pit-stops and 277 laps on the track of 13,650 Km, the MG XPOWER powered Durango PM 02 finished its race in 25th position and this gave a great satisfaction to all the mechanics, engineers, drivers and to all the people of the Team.

After the race the Durango management thanked the whole team for a job well done.