Taree’s Alex Cudlin has had the best finish of the season to date at the most recent round of the 2009 World Endurance Championships.

The 8 hour race was held in searing heat under the Albacete sun in Spain.

With the two previous rounds of the World Endurance championships being total disasters for Alex and the Phase One Yamaha Team, hopes were high for a strong result after scoring zero points from the previous 2 rounds.

With the race starting at 6pm Saturday afternoon, local boy and Phase One Yamaha rider, Pedro Vallcaneras, showed true form by springing from 7th position off the start to quickly take the lead on lap one.

As the field stretched out, Pedro began to set fast lap times and got into a strong and fierce battle with fellow Spaniard, Dani Ribalta, but with just 6 laps of the 8 hour race done, Pedro crashed as he was entering a 3rd gear left hand turn, dropping the Phase One Yamaha team back to last position. Pedro quickly remounted the bike and began the climb back through the field.

It was then a race against time for the Phase One team to climb back up through the leader board and hopefully score some much needed championship points.

The Phase One Yamaha team pit crew worked faultlessly in the pit stops and was a major key to enable the team to climb back up the leader board.

Alex, alongside elder brother, Damian, and team mate Pedro, kept pushing hard, lapping constantly fast lap times throughout the 8 hours, to eventually climb back to 5th position, scoring their first points finish of the season.

“Today was a tough race. The temperature was in the 40c mark and when you’re racing at 110%, it can be pretty tiring, but we all pushed hard throughout the whole race. Obviously, with the problem we had at the start of the race, we needed to keep our heads down and just try and climb back to the front of the field. To finish 5th was a good result considering the set back. Obviously we wanted to finish on the podium this time, so it was a little disappointing to not get there, especially since we were on the pace, but compared to the results we have had at the previous 2 rounds, I’ll will gladly take a 5th place position. At least now we have some points in the championship and we can reapply ourselves and build on that for the final 3 races of the year” said Alex.

Alex has now returned to Australia to work on his fitness in preparation for the remaining 3 races of the year.

Cudlin speaks with team mate and Brother Damian