World Cup 2 – La Bresse, France

As it was only a short drive from Calais I decided to drive down to the second world cup and I think we were there almost as quick as I could have flown, arriving into the beautiful green hills of La Bresse on Wednesday afternoon in glorious sunshine. Having seen the track on the dirt website it looked very old school with lots of off camber grass and not the most exciting track. It’s amazing how a camera can deceive your eyes as it was steep in lots of places and as it was a completely new track with lots of line options it was looking like it would be a really fun race track. The weather was always going to be a big factor on a track mainly on grass and being in the hills the weather can change so quickly. I started on cut spikes which were great for grip on the off camber sections and as there was no real defined line I think the spikes helped cut into the track. It was a pretty hard track to go fast on at the beginning as there were lots of blind rises and drops and different lines were appearing all the time. The only problem was the transport, as there was no chairlift, just trucks and buses, the queue to get up the hill was as big as any UK national !!

Practice was going ok for me, it was a track where I struggled to know if I was going fast or not, I didn’t feel that good, but everyone was saying the same, it was hard to get good flow on the track. Qualifying was going to be my first idea as to how I was going. I had a pretty good run, it had dried up so much from earlier in the day when I practiced that I felt like I could have pushed harder all the way down, however my time was good enough for 1st spot in qualifying so I was happy with that.

Fortunately the rain stayed away and we were on to dry tyres for the final. The track was great fun in the dry especially now with a pretty well defined racing line. Practice went well on the morning of the race. Time for the final came around pretty quick and we still had the sun which was good. I was the last rider off and knew that the times would be faster today. My final run never quite seemed to come together. I felt pretty tense on the bike and just didn’t let go and attack the course. It was such a short track that all the small mistakes I made were really costly and I crossed the line 5 secs back from the winner on the day Sabrina Jonnier. I was really disappointed in myself as I felt like I really hadn’t ridden to my best. However it was still a consistent result for points and with all disappointments there are always valuable lessons to be learnt. The good thing is I only have a week to ponder on it before I can make amends next week in Andorra !