Round 2 – World Championship –
Bellpuig, Spain

Simpson takes 12th from Spanish bog

The second round of the FIM Motocross World Championship saw some of the harshest weather conditions in recent memory as more than nine hours of continual rainfall wrecked the Bellpuig circuit and washed-out the Grand Prix of Spain. Team KTM UK’s Shaun Simpson and James Noble faced a test of attrition and came through with 12th and 14th positions overall in the MX2 and MX1 classes respectively.

Frustratingly the weekend started dry and sunny and during the first MX2 qualification heat Simpson defied a missed neutral out of the gate that left him in last position on the start-straight to cut tight on the first turn and make some astute overtaking moves on the first lap to rise to seventh. He then went on to secure fourth place and the seventh pick of slot on the start line for the two motos.
Sunday morning’s relentless ceiling of low grey cloud and showers did not bode well and amazingly the climate did not change for the entire day. The terrain became soft, shifting and sticky mire that reduced the races to lotteries, swallowed a number of bikes and increased lap-times by almost half.

Simpson manfully completed the first 35 minute and 2 lap sprint with 9th position after recovering from a predictable slip on the opening circulation that left him in last place. He was one of many to taste the Spanish soil and the second moto was even worse with bikes strewn and trapped in the slime and the few mobile competitors were fortunate to scale the steep uphill sections. The race was eventually red-flagged. A finish of 14th gave the Scot 12th overall.

“Everyone is saying the same thing, and that is the GP was the worst that anybody has ridden in their life!” said the 20 year old. “There was so much water on the track that it was up halfway on the bike in some places. The second moto was a disaster for everyone and the GP result should have been taken after the first race. It was totally what we were not expecting after yesterday when the track was good. We just had to get through it.”

Simpson is now seventh in the world championship and just four points from the top five.

James Noble made a tentative debut for the team after missing more than a month of preparation due to pneumonia and the discovery of a shadow in his lung. The Englishman had a tough baptism in the mud and the MX1 contest was cut to just one moto after the riders spoke with race control and were hesitant to brave an increasingly perilous layout.

“It was just a matter of survival really,” Noble said. “I did not start well and then got ‘filled-in’ around the first few corners, lost my goggles and from then on it was just a matter of getting round and pick off as many riders as I could. I had a few little crashes and a moment when I had to stop and clean my eyes but I’m not too disappointed considering the circumstances.”

The team will now take several days this week to head across the country and to the small town of Agueda for the Grand Prix of Portugal and the third round of fifteen in the series.

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