As we announced in our news of the week, Dougie Lampkin travelled from his home in Yorkshire to the woods outside Bradford to take part in his first official Enduro race on a Gas Gas EC300.
All this was happening while the second race of the Indoor Trial World Championship was being held in Marseille, which as you well know ended with victory for Toni Bou.
Text: Trialworld / Photos: Dougie Lampkin website
The Isle of Man driver was up against the veteran and strong David Knight, as well as other top pilots, so Lampkin himself knew his chances of victory were remote. In any case, his performance was impeccable and he finished the day in a meritorious second position after the dispute of two races of one hour duration.
In the previous week Lampkin had been training in the vicinity of Gas Gas, in order to familiarise himself with the bike and continue preparing for the second round of the Indoor Enduro World Championship, which will be held in Barcelona in a few weeks. At the moment the British rider is competing with a practically production bike, and it will not be until a couple of weeks when he will have the specifications demanded on his EC 300, although this point, as he alleged in his statements, did not condition his result in the aforementioned race.
This is a curious fact. Lampkin got into the leading group “in extremis” after tackling a select area of rocks that allowed him to save almost 30 seconds per lap, but which posed a risk for the bike and rider. Most pilots chose to be conservative on this point.
According to Dougie: “It’s been a very productive weekend overall. The work done in Barcelona has been perfect and is paying off, so I’m looking forward to the second round of the World Indoor Championships in Barcelona to do well. It has been necessary to work a lot on the suspensions and achieve a mechanical behavior that is more in line with my riding style. Today I rode with a bike that is practically standard, the same that any fan can buy in a shop, something that I consider a very positive point as well.”
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