Tuesday June 25, 2019 at 11:22am
This weekend saw the 10 strong British fleet of Enduro GP World Championship riders head to Rovetta in northern Italy for the famous Valli Bergamesche GP.
On Saturday the riders were greeted with superbly wet conditions after extreme overnight rain and thunderstorms wreaked havoc throughout the area. After completing nearly the first full lap with overcast conditions, their luck ran out and the heavens well and truly opened. The rain was in for almost all of the rest of the day and conditions in the tests continued to deteriorate but this played into the hands of our British riders who are used to tricky conditions!
Danny McCanney took his first ever Enduro GP outright victory after a long and hard fought battle with fellow countryman, Steve Holcombe and Italian Sherco rider, Matteo Cavallo. McCanney suffered from his chain de-railing in the extreme test but managed to claw back some much needed time in the final enduro test, destroying the field and taking over 20 seconds from the next best rider! At the end of the day, he won by 0.06 seconds from Holcombe, with Cavallo less than 2 seconds behind!
Brad Freeman did extremely well to even start this weekend after breaking his collar bone at last weekends GP of Greece! He carded two podiums in Enduro 1 and valuable top 10 finishes and points in the Enduro GP title hunt. Both him and Holcombe, on paper, would not be fit to race this weekend but true grit and determination got them both through it, and kept their championship hopes alive!
On day 2 McCanney suffered another chain derailment but this time he lost over a minute and it damaged his overall result. He did however manage another podium in Enduro 3 with 2nd place!
Holcombe charged as hard as his condition would allow and finished a fantastic 2nd overall and won the Enduro 3 Class!
Joe Wootton and Alex Snow had difficult weekends but both showed great speed throughout different tests. Joe was 3rd outright in the first enduro test of Sunday! Joe finished 16th on day 1 and 15th day 2. Alex was 25th day 1 and 23rd day 2 after losing his seat and having some other issues along the way.
In the Junior ranks Jack Edmondson took 3rd overall and victory in Junior 2 on day 1 along with a 5th overall and 3rd in Junior 2 on day 2 which keeps him well In the mix for the Junior 2 title!
Alex Walton showed some good speed early on in the race but some mistakes damaged his day 1 result and on day 2 he suffered an overheating issue which caused a DNF.
In the Youth Class Dan Mundell was holding down a podium position on Saturday until he slipped off on the going and broke his throttle and couldn’t get the bike back in time to get a finish. On day 2 he started off slow but came back strong on the last lap, however a couple of issues and his slow start meant he missed the podium by 3 seconds and finished in 4th place.
In the Open Senior Class David Knight took another 1-1 scorecard away with him! He was right at home here after winning the event years beforehand and the fans loved seeing the Manxman back there!
Tom Ellwood charged hard in the Open 4 Stroke Class but ran into a few issues including a footpeg falling off and a swinging arm issue but despite all of this he still finished 3-2 and took himself to the top of the championship standings!