Before we even set off to the UK for round 5, Matts spent 3 weeks working and training with Moto3 GP rider Scott Ogden who uses our place as a Spanish base for mountain cycling and small pitbike circuit training between his races.
We arrived at Brands with a good feeling and felt positive for the weekend. The track and facility is amazing, such an iconic circuit. During the track walk Matts found some of the inclines really steep and as it was his first time riding there couldn’t wait to get started. Fridays free training went well although one session was half wet half dry, he ended the combined sessions on P5. Qualifying on Saturday morning went well although it was difficult to get out of the group and get a better time and he ended up towing a couple of riders in the last laps who passed him in his slipstream bumping up their time. He qualified P8. Not happy with this as he was looking to be in the top 5.
Race one was red flagged in lap 1 after an extremely bad incident involving 6 riders behind Matts. All riders luckily ok and the race restarted after 20 minutes. Matts stayed part of the lead group until the end, with the podium places constantly changing and coming into the last lap in 3rd, to be knocked back to 4th by 0.200 seconds. Matts was upset but even more determined that race 2 on Sunday he would be up there.
Matts put up some really strong passes in race 2 and even managed to unfortunately put one of his team mates in the gravel, this was classed as a racing incident by race direction with no penalty for either of them. After that point there were 2 riders still in front and when one of them crashed out of second this bumped Matts up to cross the line in 2nd podium place.
There was no one happier than Matts at Brands Hatch this weekend!! First podium in one of the Talent cups is a great result. Lets see if we can get the same momentum going into Silverstone Moto GP next week. He didn’t ride on the GP circuit fully yet only the national circuit, so again another new track and the schedule will be less riding time, but we are going in fully positive and ready!
Many thanks to:
Stirlings racing team/Union 722/Stirlings Oil/ Platinum Heat.
Microlise Cresswell
Arai
Hoffmann groep
Bracket Official
Hendriks sport horses
Marc Boes
Jurg Elend
Road to Moto GP
Stal Johan Heins
VMS
Gubbels Autobedrijf.
