Raivo Dankers forces breakthrough in Kegums!
Hutten Metaal Yamaha Racing has completed a successful Grand Prix of Latvia. Raivo Dankers finished fifth in the EMX250. Micha Boy de Waal scored his first five points of the season. But Sven van der Mierden also scored points in both heats.
Raivo started the weekend convincingly by setting the fastest time in his group in timed training on Saturday. During the session he managed to improve his time several times and this gave him a lot of confidence in the heats. In both the first and second heats, Raivo did not get away well at the start. He found the right line in the waves and managed to gain many places in the first heat. Dankers advanced to third place and managed to hold on for a long time. However, in the final phase he had to let Alberto Forato pass, so he crossed the finish line in fourth place.
In the second moto Raivo had to catch up again. From around fifteenth place he came back to the front and gave everything to pass the riders in front of him as quickly as possible. Dankers managed to pass one rider after another and finished in a good seventh place, which put him fifth in the daily results. With this good result he rose to fourteenth place in the European Championship standings.
Sven did not have the right feeling on the track on Saturday and qualified twenty-fourth in the MXGP class. Things went much better in the heats on Sunday. In the first moto he started around twentieth place, but a crash dropped him back to twenty-seventh place. He came back to the front with a good rhythm and managed to take another World Championship point with twentieth place. In the second moto he started around eighteenth place and managed to maintain this position throughout the moto. He changed positions several times and crossed the finish line in a strong seventeenth place, which again earned him four points.
During the free training on Saturday, Micha still looked for the correct adjustment of the suspension. Everything went well in the timed training and he managed to achieve a fast seventeenth time. He also performed strongly in the qualifying heat and managed to finish seventeenth again with a good rhythm. The rider from Veen had a good feeling and he also showed this in the first heat. He rode around fifteenth to sixteenth place throughout the heat and crossed the finish line in sixteenth, gaining five points. In the second moto he again got a good start, but unfortunately he collided with another rider and crashed hard. Because the engine had suffered a lot of damage, he had to return to the pits, where a lot of time was lost. When De Waal started riding again, he came back well, but unfortunately just failed to score in 22nd place.
This weekend the entire Hutten Metaal Yamaha Racing will start in the tenth race of the Motocross World Championship in Teutschenthal, Germany.
Photos: Eric Laurijssen
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