| 15th out
of 46 starters. Quali: 4th. ~500 spectators A race to forget, and no one else to blame but myself. Killed the engine at the start of race one and had to come from dead last on a track where it is very hard to pass anyone. Therefore, this made my day... qualifying was promising though, I was in first row for the race, which was quite important for the race, but that counts very little in the end... |
| I still had to recover from the shoulder injury and I still had
pain, but riding was not a problem. I just didn;t do any practice
between the races to let it as much rest as possible. But of course
this is at the expense of general fitness and riding in particular.
Bike seemed ok after the last race, so not much to be done there. |
| It was very cold on race day, but luckily dry. I started calmly to
not burn to much energy and managed during qualifying to find two clean
laps without any traffic. This seems to be key because traffic during
qualifying is the biggest problem. You can't really get into a rhythm.
It was very close and the first five riders were within 0.3sec. After
that, there was quite a gap, so it promised to be a good day. Quali result: 4th |
| First
start, one of the youth riders jump started waaaay ahead of the lights,
which caused many others to start as well, so the whole start was
screwed up. So they stopped the race and ordered a re-start. And this
is when all went wrong and no one else to blame but myself. I killed
the engine!! The biggest risk then is that someone hits you from behind
and I was really lucky that everyone got by without hitting me. What
you can also see on an onboard video (see video section) is that
someone from behind again produced a jump start waaay ahead of the
lights and the moment the lights went off he was right next to me,
which was of course very distracting. All in all, very
good luck after very bad luck. Now I was last on a track where passing
is very difficult to impossible. There was quite some turmoil in lap
one and I passed the line after the first lap in 26th position. After
lap 9 I was in 16th position, then it started to get harder to pass
anyone because the speed difference was not enough anymore for clean
passes. I picked up one more place in lap 12 and then was stuck and
couldn't gain any more positions. Race 1 result: 15th |
| The
new rule this year to start from the position you end the first race in
does not really benefit me this year... starting position 15 and even
worse, in the middle of the grid where you are basically stuck. I came
off the grid very well but my neighbor did some weird moves and I had
to back up a little. Suddenly riders came from all sides and I ended up
coming out of the first lap in 19th position ! Great... and even worse,
I lost two more positions because I was too hesitant passing the slower
guy in front of me and two riders took advantage of this and went by as
well. So 21st after three laps... and again, I had a hard time passing
anyone. Certainly no lack of trying, I went left right ad center, had
to go off the track a few times to avoid crashes, but just couldn't
pick up positions. Very frustrating. I was then running in 19th and
finally benefitted from a little crash in the group in front of me, so
finished 17th. On a day where podium was not at all out of reach... :-(
Race 2 result: 17th Overall: 15th |
| The next race will be in Joure in two weeks. Chance for a fresh start on a track that I don't like so much though... |