The weekend before last, seven British riders headed to the 2022 FIM Junior Motocross World Championship at the Lavanko track in Finland, in the famous motocross city of Vantaa.
Report and Images by the ACU
Contesting the event in the 65cc Class, the British riders included Marty Spires, Leo Wilson, Arthur Moore, Brian Gyles and Riley Ray Barrow, while in the 85cc Class Freddie Gardiner and Josh Vail were both competing.
The riders all took part in the Team presentation alongside the other nations on the Friday afternoon and prepared for the Practice and Qualifying sessions on the Saturday.
On the Saturday all the riders rode well and gave their best efforts in the Warm-up session before heading into the Qualifying session. At the end of the Saturday three riders had qualified with another rider as first Reserve including Brian Gyles in the 65cc class with Leo Wilson as Reserve and in the 85cc class Josh Vail and Freddie Gardiner both made the cut.
Sunday saw Josh Vail in great form after going 4th fastest in the morning warm-up and he was running strong in the opening moto until he suffered couple of crashes which saw him finish outside the points. Freddie Gardiner also rode well in the first race to finish 16th.
After the disappointment of race one for Josh Vail, in the second race Josh got a good start and rode a great race to finish in 7th and claim 11th overall in the 85cc Championship with one point scoring ride. Freddie rode another good race, but narrowly missed the points in 24th and claimed 22nd overall.
In the 65cc class Brian Gyles rode well in the first race but missed the points and then in the second race, Gyles had a better ride claim 16th and 23rd overall on the weekend. For the second race Leo Wilson made it onto the gate and managed to finish 29th in the race.
The ACU would like to thank all the team supporters, riders’ families and Dave Edwards and Ash Wilde for their support and Gulf Race Fuels for the supply of the race fuel for each rider competing at the event.
