Two Second Places for GT Factory Racing in the Highlands
Marc Beaumont and Rachel Atherton Both Narrowly Miss 1st
Marc Beaumont and Rachel Atherton of GT Factory Racing both narrowly missed out on winning at Round Two of the British Downhill Series up at the brutal Fort William track.
Adverse weather conditions again came into play, a forecast of high winds and torrential rain led the organisers to bring forward Sundays race to Saturday evening . This time however it didnt play in favour of the team who had only ridden the official practice allotted by the organisers. Many others, including both winners of the events, had ridden earlier in the week to gain extra time on the long and testing track.
With only one day to get to grips with and then race the course both Marc and Rachel crammed in more runs than usual in a bid to get up to speed.
Rachel was first up, she was chasing down Round 1 winner Manon Carpenter who set a very strong time of 5.31.180. Rachel rode strong and fast, she was happy with her run which ended up shy of Carpenters time by 1.3 seconds. It was hard up there today, I got as much done as I could, but I really could have done with a few more runs to get my confidence up - I guess theres nothing you can do about the weather! mentioned Rachel.
Marc was in a similar situation to Rachel. Having only one run on the Friday meant that he had to ride nonstop on Saturday to get to grips with the track, six practice runs is not the norm before a race run but in this situation it was all that could be done. The early time of Matt Simmonds seemed to be the one to beat and when Marc hit the final few jumps it was clear he was quicker, his time of 4.52.632 bettered Simmonds time by nearly 3 seconds with just one rider to go. But that rider was the current World Champion - Danny Hart. Hart had no issues with practice, he had been at the venue since Wednesday and this showed as he put in an amazing run to take the win by half a second over Marc. it was a hard day for us today, we did what we could to claw back lost ground to the riders who had been here earlier this week. Im happy with the run and the bike was running really well so I cant ask for much more said Marc.
The team now rest up for a weekend before the next batch of races. Gee aims to be back on the bike for the IXS Cup in Leogang which precedes the second round of the World Cup in Italy.
