Last weekend, Team GRT headed north to FatCat Motoparc for Round 6 of the Revo ACU British Championship. An absolute scorcher of a weekend reaching highs of 30 degrees, the boys were tested in the tough conditions.
This week saw the return of our 65 riders Teddy Merriman and Elliot Shawyer, and including our other riders, made up a seven-rider squad for the weekend’s racing.
Teddy Merriman, who has been improving all year, had a good weekend in the sand, showing that he is capable of running with the top 65cc riders in the country. Some average starts hindered him from top 10 finishes, however Teddy still took home an 11-14-13-11 scorecard over the weekend for 11th overall. The top 10 finishes are coming!
Young Elliot Shawyer had another positive weekend of racing. The young 8 year old showed lots of potential, racing with the fastest 65cc riders in the country, most who are older than Elliot. He did have some bike issues which unfortunately set him back, but Shawyer came home with 25th overall. Still hugely respectable on a 40-man gate.
Our 85cc red plate holder, Billy Askew, had another astonishing weekend defending his championship lead. Billy came out the blocks flying, winning his first two races, and narrowly missing out in race three despite battling hard for the win. In Billy’s fine race, he pulled out a gap on his competitors until falling on the final lap. Askew raced back to his machine, rode his heart out and managed to win over his championship rival by 0.2 seconds, and claiming the overall while doing so. He extends his points lead to 46 points.
Our three 125cc Youth riders; Joe Brookes, Ollie Colmer and Erez Melman had difficult weekends.
Brookes unfortunately picked up a shoulder injury whilst leading race three on Sunday, forcing him to cut his weekend short. He will get checked out and begin a process of rehab, to make sure he is back on the bike to the best of his ability.
Ollie Colmer showed some good speed in the races, with a top 5 finish on Saturday. He also had some bad luck, after being forced to retire from a race due to a heavy impact on the front wheel. A difficult weekend continued on Sunday with more issues, but he will be back with better luck coming his way!
Finally, Erez struggled to find a flow in qualifying, giving himself a difficult task of starting from the outside gates all weekend. He did manage to score two points-scoring finishes in what is a hotly contested class. He will regroup and be back to fight again.
Finally, Sunday saw our Pro MX2 rider Jamie Carpenter take to the stage. Qualifying in 7th, Jamie managed to get a good gate pick for the races, and once again he pulled together two great starts in both. He battled hard all day, and despite the heat, put in two good races to finish 5-4 for 4th overall. With that, he moves up to 2nd in the Championship standings. He did also win the Expert category of his class, so took home a 1st place trophy.
GRT make their debut in MXGP for the first time ever, with Jamie Carpenter racing the MX2 class in Lommel, Belgium in two weeks time. We will be back to the British Championship on 30th July with Round 7 at Whitby.
