Lampkin Back on Top

| May 20, 2001

Dougie Lampkin (Montesa-HRC Cota 315R) triumphed today in the second day of the Belgian World Trial, the third meeting of the World Championship. Takahisa Fujinami (Montesa-HRC RTL 250), yesterday’s winner, took third place this time around. Montesa-HRC remains unbeaten, as shown by this current edition of the event, and the points standings are still headed by Lampkin, followed by Fujinami.

David Cobos finished 12th, going down one position in the standings, while Amós Bilbao, also a rider with the Montesa-HRC team, finished 18th and was out of the points zone. José Manuel Alcaraz, on the other hand, didn’t start this second day, suffering from injuries from a fall the pervious day.

The organization of this trial has varied the course of some zones, smoothing out their difficulties. Fujinami shared leadership with Marc Freixa at the end of the first trial, with a three-point advantage over Lampkin, who carried out an exemplary second lap which led him to victory.

“The bad day I had yesterday made me want to improve,” Lampkin said in a Montesa press release. “I thought about why the mistakes happened, and we had a meeting with the team to analize the faults. I think that I haven’t been further than fifth position in a world trial since 1996, and today the objective was to win. I’m happy I acheived that objective, even though I didn’t start so well, and I’m especially happy about my second round.”

“I’m very happy,” Fujinami said. “I won the race on the totaling of the two days, and I’ve been on the podium for the last four trials. They’re the best results in order to face the trial in my country with the maximum motivation and confidence.”

“It’s obvious that my balance of the weekend is not good,” Cobos said. “I couldn’t get the rhythm of the race, and both yesterday and today I made many mistakes. The zones were artificial and strange, and at the first failure, you went from zero to five. Now you just have to turn the page, look ahead and try to recover your position.”

The fourth found of the World Championship will be held on June 2-3 in the Japanese city of Motegi.

Results

1. Dougie Lampkin (Montesa-HRC)

2. Marc Freixa (Sherco)

3. Takahisa Fujinami (Montesa-HRC)

4. Marc Colomer (Gas Gas)

5. Adam Raga (Gas Gas)

Points Standings

1. Dougie Lampkin (110)

2.Takahisa Fujinami (88)

3. Marc Freixa (85)

4. Graham Jarvis (77)

5. Albert Cabestany

By Freelance