Tuesday, April 19 2011
Short of Brampton in Cumbria, Cadders Hill in Lyng, Norfolk is one of the sandiest tracks on the Maxxis British Motocross championship calendar and it is with much expectation that Proppa.com KTM pulled into the paddock on Saturday past for the third round of Britain’s top championship.
Things didn’t go quite to plan however. For Liam Garland, qualifying in MX2 was perhaps a premonition of the day to come; improving on his Little Silver qualifying position, but not as fast as at Canada Heights, he qualified in thirty-fifth. In the first race, after a start in the rear of the pack, Liam soon found himself on the ground and had to start from scratch. Things went from bad to worse when he developed a mechanical problem and had to pull in just after the half-way point.
The second race was an improvement on the first. After crashing on the first lap and making steady progress up through the pack into twenty-seventh, another crash dropped Liam back down the order. He fought his way back to twenty-ninth at the finish. The third race is one that the team would prefer to forget. With his bike developing a problem in the waiting zone, the youngster tried manfully to nurse the bike around the track for as long as possible, but in the end it was another DNF.
For MX1 riders Martin Barr and Nathan Parker things were looking somewhat better; Barr qualified third and Parker ninth in the super pole.
For Barr, the day was a day of near misses. The first race saw him hemmed in the crush of the first corner, which hampered his chances to make a clean get-away. Martin had to settle for fifth as the top four pulled too big a lead for him to challenge. The second race saw Barr make several improvements to his line selection, leading him to challenge the front-runners earlier and attempting to break into the top three within minutes of the start. An ill-chosen moment however left him in the dirt, restarting two positions down and losing sight of that coveted second place. With two laps to go, he took advantage of position changes in the front to move back to fourth.
The final race was tough for Martin as he failed to find his race rhythm. Although he moved through to fifth place early on, he found himself relegated to sixth by Jason Dougan half way through the race and was unable to make any further impression. The 5-4-6 combination left Martin in fifth place on the day and seventh in the championship.
Nathan suffered from bad luck off the new concrete start all day. The first race saw him make a strong push in the early stages and lots of perseverance whilst suffering from arm pump was rewarded with a ninth in the closing laps of the race. In the second race, Nathan found himself in the middle of the pack, but clever line selection and unrelenting pressure on rivals gave him a top fifteen position by lap three, and steady progress into the top ten with the two-lap board at the finish-line. With just a couple of corners to go, Nathan pipped fellow KTM rider Jamie Law to ninth place.
Nathan’s final race found him in the back of the pack after he was nearly taken down by another rider on the start. Again, his hard work and smart riding paid off with a return to the top fifteen by half-time and a solid run for thirteenth by the chequered flag was the reward, ending the day in eighth, and just one point off the top ten in the championship.
With a wry smile, Steve Turner commented on the day: "I don’t think we quite got what we wanted out of the weekend. With Martin we were knocking on the door for the podium all weekend, but it never quite happened for him. He ended in fifth overall, which is not too bad for the championship, but not quite what we expected.
"Nathan had a really strong ride all day, never got out of the gate in the first two races and had to come through from the back. In the last he nearly got wiped out on the start and started in near-enough last place, but he had a really strong race and came through to thirteenth for an eighth overall.
"Liam had a total nightmare, poor lad. Mechanical issues and crashes wrecked his day, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said, he’ll be back."
Nathan Parker: "Qualifying was OK, I changed bikes after getting a stone stuck under my brake pedal which meant it was stuck on and eventually melted the hose. I had just enough time to get a couple of laps in and managed to qualify in 12th and then ended up in 9th in the super pole. In the first race I just didn’t get a good enough start, ended up in 9th. In the second race had a bad start and managed to get to 9th. I didn’t get arm pump so I rode a lot better and felt a lot better on the bike. In the last race I had a terrible start, started right at the back and then got back to 13th. I’ve been riding well, my fitness is good, I just had a bit of bad luck again."
Liam Garland: "The weekend wasn’t good at all. My fitness was there, my speed was good, but the bike played up in the first and last race. The second race was good, and hopefully next time will be better. I qualified better than Little Silver but worse than Canada Heights, so I’ll work to fix that for next time."
Martin Barr: "I looked forward to coming to Lyng because it’s one of my favourite tracks. I was 2nd in qualifying and 3rd in super pole but still happy enough with it. I struggled to get off the gate all day, here the first three or four get away quickly so in the first race it wasn’t happening by the time I got to 5th. The second race was better, I found a lot better lines in that one and had a better start too. I crashed when the front end washed out but got back up to 4th. It was a bit of a mistake when I had a safe second. In the last race I couldn’t really get a good rhythm all race, I ended up 6th with 5th overall on the day and 7th in the championship. It’s not where I want to be and it’s not where the team wants to be so I have a lot of work to do."
