enduro news
© Bob Mullins   

News

Indoor Enduro Rd1 Genoa, Italy
First Practice and Jonny fastest !!

Saturday 27th November the Indoor World Enduro Championship started and Jonny Walker made his first official race for the KORR team and his World Scene debut. Some may say a very ambitiouss task for the 19 year old rider with less than 1 years experience in Enduro, but Jonny is a fast learner and with big ambitions, and there is nothing better to test the potential of a rider than to put them in at the deep end and see how they cope.

On inspection of the Genoa track it appeared relatively easy and fast, not too technical, it was obvious from the start that it would favour the Enduro riders who have good MX skills and speed, not at all like some tracks which favour riders from a Trials background.

The first practice went very well, Jonny was in a group which had many slower riders and in the 10 minute only session it was nearly impossible to get a clear run and make a fast lap. Although remarkably he must have managed one clear run as he posted the overall fastest lap of all groups which obviously surprised us and also had many other's asking the question who is Jonny Walker ?

In the second practice session Jonny had no chance to improve his time, as every lap he was slowed by other riders making mistakes, however his first session time was good enough for 6th overall and gave him a good position in the qualifying heats.

He made a bad start in his heat race, being almost last around the first turn but quickly moved up to 4th after a couple of laps and was closing in on 3rd when he fell in the rock section, he quickly remounted but crashed immediately as his front
brake was damaged and sticking on !! so he had to make a quick trackside repair which put him down at the back again, he managed to come back to 5th but needed 4th to go through to the main event.

Jonny's last chance to make the main races ended in the LCQ, this race only the winner transfer's and he made a mistake whilst in 2nd position and dropped back down the results. So the last race for him would be the night race, unfortunately we did not go prepared to race in the Dark !! and his standard lights really weren't up to the task of racing around this track, so the best he could do was to follow the tailight of Dougie Lampkin and take 2nd place.

Dispite being very disappointed with not qualifying Jonny was obviously very pleased with his pace which shows he already has the speed and more importantly the potential to race with the best, he just needs races under his belt to gain
experience, confidence and the necessary fitness at this level. He is very motivated and determined to prepare for the 3rd round of the Indoor series in Barcelona and come back even stronger. The 2nd round of the series will be in Brazil, unfortunately as we did not make the top 10 in Genoa it will be impossible for us to go and race there.

Next Event: Eddy Extreme Enduro, Leeds, January 23rd