Everything was going perfectly for the BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team to begin with. Starting from second on the grid, Forés took the lead after just a few minutes. The #37 M RR dropped back into second place briefly after about 50 minutes, but was soon back in front. Reiterberger then extended the lead but after almost two and a half hours of racing Foray skidded while in the lead and fell. He returned the #37 M RR to the pits and after a repair break lasting four and a half minutes it was back to the race. The BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team was temporarily in 20th place and trailing by four laps, but from there the only way was up.
The rest of the race was turbulent at times, with various race leaders dropping right down the field after falls or issues, but went without a hitch for Forés, Reiterberger and Foray and they made up place after place with fast lap times. Forés held the fastest lap time of the whole field for quite some time. After five hours of racing they had worked their way into the top ten. The trio was in sixth place after seven hours, and moved up into fourth place soon after, when two motorbikes in the leading pack collided. That was when the BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team set about reducing the margin to the top three.
In the final stage the race became something of a real sprint thriller. Ninety minutes before the end the team leading at that time developed a problem which put the podium within realistic reach of the #37 M RR. When all the teams had completed their final pit stops 30 minutes before the chequered flag, Reiterberger, the closing rider, was just ten seconds off the podium. He really went for it and set the team’s fastest race lap in the final stint (just six-thousandths of a second behind the fastest lap overall).
Reiterberger closed the gap to two seconds – and just a few minutes before the end of the race, the rider in third place ended up in the gravel. That cleared the path to third place and the second podium finish in a row. After 416 laps, Reiterberger crossed the finish line in third place with the #37 M RR, just 0.976 seconds behind second place.
The privateer BMW squad Team LRP Poland finished in 16th place. The riders of the #90 BMW S 1000 RR were Nigel Walraven (NED), Stefan Kerschbaumer (AUT) and Thomas Gradinger (AUT).