Lotte van Drunen of the De Baets MX team has won the second round of the Women’s World Championship in Riola Sardo, Sardinia and has become the new leader in the championship.
Lotte showed in both free practice and time practice that she was the fastest and took pole position with a difference of more than two seconds on the second lady.
On Saturday afternoon, the temperatures had already skyrocketed when the starting gate dropped for the first moto. The moto started with a setback for Lotte as she encountered a fallen rider in the first corner, forcing her to start the race at the back. During the first two laps, she managed to make up many places and by continuing to set fast lap times, she got closer and closer to the leading group. With two laps to go, she stepped it up a notch and despite getting into the back markers , she managed to close the gap to the leader. With two corners to go, she went on the attack and managed to take over the lead. Lotte won the moto and scored maximum in the first moto.
On Sunday morning, the starting gate dropped for the second moto. Lotte got a good start and managed to take over third place in the second corner. She quickly moved up to second place and shortly afterwards took the lead in the race. Controlled and almost flawless, she went around the track and managed to win the moto with a safe lead.
With a 1-1 in the heats, Lotte won the day’s classification and takes the lead in the standings of the world championships.
Dex Kooiker and Tyla van de Poel were riding the first EMX125 race in Sardinia. Due to the large turnout, training was done in two groups. Tyla qualified twelfth in his group and Dex finished seventeenth.
In the first moto Tyla managed to get a very good start and started the race around tenth place. With a good rhythm he worked his way up to fifth place but then unfortunately crashed and was knocked back to thirtieth place. He fought his way back to twentieth place but collided with another rider in the heat of the battle and eventually finished twenty-fourth. Dex also got off to a good start and crossed the finish line in sixteenth place. With this, he picked up his first points.
In the second moto it was again Tyla who got a very good start and came out of the first corner in fourth place. Unfortunately, due to a mistake on the first lap, he was knocked back to thirteenth place. Due to the heat and the tough first moto on Saturday, Tyla noticed that he was quickly running out of strength and therefore decided to ride a constant pace. He lost several places but still managed to take two points with a nineteenth place. Dex was also in a good position at the start, but in the second corner, a rider crashed right in front of him, causing him to come to a stop. This was not all, because in the second lap another rider jumped into him and due to this he crashed. Because it took him a long time to get his engine running again, scoring points was out of the question, so he calmly finished the race.
Benoit Paturel managed to score a World Championship point with a twentieth place in the first moto of the MXGP class. In the second moto he had to deal with a problem that prevented him from scoring.
This weekend, the world championship continues in Arco di Trento, Italy.
