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The official race report service of Kawasaki Racing Team.

28 Juli 2024

Mathis Valin keeps the red plate

Bud Racing Kawasaki's Mathis Valin maintained his thirteen-point lead in the FIM European EMX250 Championship with his fifth podium of the season in the seventh round of the series at Lommel in the Flanders region of north-eastern Belgium.
 

The track for race two was even tougher than it had been for race one on Saturday after the track crew had only worked on the faces of the jumps overnight and left the straights and corners at their most rugged. This inevitably favoured the local sand experts but the French teenager showed his maturity as he rode his own race rather than being tempted into duels with the locals, who have ridden such tracks from a young age, to maintain fourth place throughout the moto. This earnt third overall, on the same points as second and just a single point shy of the overall winner, to ensure that he retains the thirteen-point series lead which he held at the start of the weekend.
 
Mathis Valin: "I must admit that I was disappointed with my riding today; I was fighting the track and that cost me some energy. I got a good start again, but I didn't felt comfortable with the track. But normally this should be a learning year for me and I am still learning every weekend! The most important thing is that I have kept the red plate and I only lost one point to one of my main rivals this weekend. There are still four round to go, so now we go home to work to keep the red plate until the end of the series."
 
Bud teammate Benjamin Garib held a confident fourteenth for the first twelve minutes of the Sunday moto until he was forced to retire but the Chilean's Saturday scoreline was sufficient to see him advance to twelfth in the series standings.
 
England's Joel Rizzi, so unfortunate to fall at turn one in the Saturday moto, grabbed the holeshot in race two on his wild card appearance and displayed patience and maturity as he mixed it with the championship leaders and a couple of local sand experts to finish a commendable seventh.