It is autumn, kids sneak around schoolhouses looking for ways to get in and the world’s fastest
bikers make noise around the very centre of the French universe - that is Magny-Cours de Nevers
race track in France. The 7th round will kick off the second half of World Championship races and
at least in World SSP class it will be anything but boring as one might have thought after the first
half of the season.
It seems many guys have located a tin of lion cookies (when you eat them you’ll become brave like
a lion) - Dominique Aegerter (Yamaha) used to keep those to himself. But this time they left the
leader of the series only the 3rd in the first race. Although the race was finished 7 laps early because
Bahattin Sofouglo (MV Augusta) took a fall it was likely Lorenzo Baldassari (Yamaha) and Glenn
Van Straalen (Yamaha) could still have kept Aegerter behind them since they were clearly faster
than the Swiss master.
Dynavolt Triumph riders would probably like to forget the whole French qualification round
because Stefano Manzi started from P16 and Hannes Soomer from P26 on Saturday.“Qualifications
went down the drain,” said Hannes after the race. “It was raining on Friday and we could not set our
tires properly, so I went onto a dry track (qualifications) with a bike that wanted to throw me off
like a wild horse.”
Luckily they could calm the horse/bike down before the 1st race and Hannes finished 15th, one
position ahead of his teammate Stefano. “I could have gained more, but the race was ended sooner
than planned. Now we have some ideas as to what to adjust for tomorrow’s race. Right now it is a
very malleable bike, but not as fast as we’d like it to be, and I will have to adjust my style of driving
to manage the bike - right now I cannot make use of my strengths. I could work harder on the bike
if only it would improve the speed.”