Easter Weekend saw the Apico Husqvarna team head to Hawkstone Park for the second round of the Michelin MX Nationals in the blistering heat.
On arrival at the venue Jamie Law looked uncertain if he would be able to compete after taking a rock to his knee at an event on Friday and injuring his knee. After contesting practice and the opening laps of the first race he was forced to retire from the event due to the pain and discomfort. After retiring from racing Jamie said “this weekend has been tough after a rock hit my bad knee on Friday at Marshfield, I tried to race at Hawkstone but after getting a good start in race 1 I was in too much pain after two laps that I had to call it a day.
The teams remaining MX1 rider Stuart Edmonds started the event with 13th fastest in the MX1 class during the Qualifying and in opening race was inside the MX1 top 10 when he made a mistake early in the moto and dropped outside the top 10 and finished 11th at the flag. The second race saw Stuart make a better start but another mistake late in the race saw him take another 11th for 10th overall.
After the races Stuart said “we had some minor issue’s in qualifying which didn’t allow me to have the best of times and a bad gate pick for the moto’s but my starts where ok all weekend. Moto 1 my front brake was jammed and the wheel kept tucking so I did the best I could. In Moto 2 I made some changes to the bike and fixed the front brake issue and I was riding more like myself and getting into a much better rhythm and making ground up on with the group in front of me but a few laps left in the race I went down out the back of the track and it caused me to drop back a fair amount of places. I’m feeling a little disappointed the past two weekends with my results but I am staying positive and keeping the pressure on to work hard and produce the results I am capable of. Big thank you to the team and all my sponsors that are keeping me going. The results will come I just have to be patient.”
In the Pro MX2 class Matt Burrows qualified in 16th place after having a slight technical issue. The first moto saw Matt suffered a bad start and then crashed on the opening lap and had to come back from dead last to finish 17th in MX2 after suffering a problem with the front forks. The second moto saw Matt get a better start but again suffered a crash before a fork issue forced him to retire for the race. Matt commented “This weekend has been a disaster, we had a slight technical issue in qualifying and then in the opening race I had a bad start and crashed on the opening lap, then in the second race the forks collapsed and that was the race done. We have two weeks to fix the issues and prepare for the next event.”
Dylan Brown – Team Owner – This weekend has been a struggle for all three riders to be honest, Jamie picked up a knee injury whilst competing at the Mike Brown memorial race on Good Friday, Matt had problems with the bike all weekend and Stuart made things hard for himself with a few small crashes and a bike problem in the first race. The boys know what to do and have the technical ability for much better results, the scorecard doesn’t show the effort that’s put in during the week by all the team and as they say, on to the next race and a little more luck required. British Championship moves on to Canada Heights in a couple of weeks so we are hoping for a more solid day.
Photo Credit – MLP_71 on Instagram and MPSimages on Facebook
Full Results can be found here – https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Events/1647087