Press Release

Mistakes mar Lanes Kawasaki British championship season debut‏


FatCat Motoparc near Doncaster is arguably
known as Britain's premier sand track. With a dyed-in-the-wool sand
expert in the awning, Lanes Kawasaki was looking forward to making a
great impression at the Maxxis British Motocross Championship season
opener. With bright sunshine out, qualifying got underway; MX2 rider
Sunny Thompson going on to score a great fifteenth place, followed
shortly after by MX1 rider Marc de Reuver taking seventh place after the
super-pole session.






Buoyed by his qualifying result, Thompson got off to a good first
race start just inside the top twenty. Although some small mistakes
early on pushed him down the pack, he soon picked up pace and, picking
off rivals two at a time, found himself in the top fifteen with the
finish timer ticking to zero. Thompson's second race got off to a bad
start. A crash in the first corner dropped him all the way to the back
of the pack, a position that took him a fair while to fight back from.
Undeterred, Thompson again leapfrogged rivals every lap, entering the
top twenty with three laps to go. Some last minute passes promoted him
to seventeenth at the chequered flag.






The final race of the day ended before it really started. After a
start just outside the top twenty, a nasty crash left Thompson in last
with an injured hand that forced retirement from the race. All was not
lost however, he still scored an eighteenth place overall on the day.






Although De Reuver showed that his reputation as an awesome sand
rider is very much deserved, small mistakes throughout the day meant
that the results did not reflect the hard work put in. A brilliant first
race start that made him a serious contender for the lead ended a lap
later when a crash dropped him to the bottom end of the top ten. After
remounting in tenth, De Reuver's steady progress up the ever-thinning
front of the pack ended in fifth at the chequered flag. The second race
again showed early promise. A battle with rivals Karro and Krestinov
ended with a crash that relegated De Reuver to ninth. After this
setback, he set his sights on rivals Dougan and Parker, passing them in
the closing minutes of the race to end in seventh.






The final race seemed to finally have the bugs ironed out. Giving
kinsman Kevin Strijbos a hard time in the lead brought some world
championship glamour to Yorkshire, but again, things went awry. Halfway
into the race, De Reuver's front end washed out yet again, putting him
down hard and injuring his hand. Although he remounted in fourteenth, De
Reuver felt it would be safer to retire from the race and have his
injury seen to. The overall day's end result would be an eleventh place.






Team principal Dean Lane commented on the day: "We're a bit upset
because we didn't get the result we wanted today, but hey, there you go.
Sunny's qualifying was good; he qualified 15th. Until now we've been
struggling in qualifying, so to get a 15th with him was really good.
We've made some changes which obviously worked. In the races, Sunny
didn't get the best of starts, but he worked his way to 15th in the
first race, and 17th in the second. In the last race he came off; we
think he may have done something to his hand, so he's having it checked.







"Marc's qualifying was ok. In the super-pole he made mistakes in
several corners and ended up 7th, which is still good. In the first race
he was running in a good 3rd behind Strijbos and Karro. He went down
but got going again and came back up to 5th, which was real good from
where he came from. In the second race he was running up there with the
front riders again, and again crashed, but this time didn't get going
quite as good as we were hoping. He ended up in 8th. In the last race he
got another sensible start, got up to second and was running really
well, but then slipped off. He picked the bike up but then pulled in
because he'd already hurt his hand."






Sunny Thompson: "Today I had a good qualifying in 15th; normally I'm
not that good in qualifying, so that was good. In the first race I had a
15th, second race I had a crash and came back from the back to 17th,
and in the third race I had a big crash and hurt my thumb. So in the
end, it's been an alright day."






Marc de Reuver: "There were a lot of expectations here today, you
know, I ride good in the sand. But yeah, I put a little bit of pressure
on myself and I made silly little mistakes all day. I kept losing my
front end all day, but that's my mistake. So it's a day best to forget."

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