From a press release:

24 Hores de Motociclisme
Circuit de Catalunya
Montmelo, Cataluynya

Catalá Suzuki 1 leads 24 Hours of Catalunya after Nine Hours

Night has fallen over the Circuit of Catalunya with the Catala 1 Suzuki (Fores-Cabana-Monge) holding a single lap lead over the Folch 2 Yamaha (Tomas-Hervas-Ribalta. The battle for third has become a duel between the Catala 2 Suzuki (Lozano-Noyes-Delgado and the Pons Yamaha (Casas-Tizon-Perez).

The Folch 1 machine (Sanchez-Arque-Martinez) was also in the hunt for third place until forced to make a lengthy stop with an electrical problem.

Fastest individual laps so far have gone to David Tomas (1’51.583), Kenny Noyes (1’51.743) and Josep Monge (1’52.155), but those times were in the daylight. The only riders in the 1’52s under the nearly full moon (and circuit lights, of course) are Monge and Noyes.

The battle for the lead is intense, but Monge 8th hour stint with a series of 52s allowed the Catala 1 Suzuki to break clear. Noyes’ 8th hour run of 52s made back the time lost for Catalá 2 but third rider Delgado who is finding the going hard at night and is giving up four seconds a lap and the team has shorted his stints to 35 minutes, hoping that he will get back on the pace at dawn.

Meanwhile, The Procurve Honda CBR1000RR ridden by the Belgian-French-Spanish trio is having slipper clutch problems and looks to be dropping back into the clutches of the Chalon Yamaha (Boquet-Baker-Giles).

The pace cars (two are used to collect the field) were out in the sixth hour for three laps while crash debris was cleared from the main straight.

The original crowd of 30,000 has now faded to only a few thousand, many of whom will follow the action throughout the night, but the big crowd will be back in the morning to see who is still running.

Next report at 11 hours…Spanish midnight.

1. Catalá 1, Suzuki (Fores-Cabana-Monge)

2. Folch 2, Yamaha (Tomas-Hervas-Ribalta) – 1 lap

3. Catala 2, Suzuki (Lozano-Noyes-Delgado) – 3 laps

4. Pons Yamaha (Casas-Tizon-Perez)-1. -4 laps

5. Procurve Honda (Stey-Lagrille-Roda) – 14 laps

6. Chalon Yamaha, (Boquet-Baker-Giles) – 14

7. Prolimit Suzuki (Gomez-Olmos-Delgado)- 16

8. Folch 1 Yamaha (Sanchez-Arque-Martinez) -17

9. Tumoto Yamaha (Mir-Huguet-Simon) – 18

10. Procurve Honda (Rojas-Carrau-Guiteres) – 23