Fork Rent Suzuki PR
After the severe rain in Spain at round two of the World Motocross championship last weekend, the Fork-Rent Suzuki team headed to Portugal for round three with both Jason Dougan and Jake Nicholls who compete in the MX2 class having high hopes of gaining crucial championship points.
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Jason was out first in qualifying race one and set about securing his main event start place with comfortable 12th position.
Jake was in determined mood and put in an outstanding performance in qualifying race two with a much deserved 10th place and succeeded in achieving his goal of qualifying for the main Grand Prix races.
In the first moto it was great to see two Fork-Rent Suzuki’s line up on the start line both Jake and Jason were pumped and ready for race action, Jake didn’t make the best of starts in race one but battled on and showed great skill and determination to come home in 23rd in his first ever Grand Prix race, there’s more to come from this young man.
It was the same for Jason in moto one, Jason didn’t get the best gate but just when he was making progress through the field, he crashed and had to start all over again.
Unfortunately on lap 15, Jason twisted his ankle going into one of the turns and had to pull out as a precaution. It was a shame as Jason’s lap times were on par with the top ten runners.
Moto two saw both riders suffer with the heat at Agueda, the air was very dry and almost all the bikes were suffering the same problem of not running cleanly and suffering with misfiring.
This didn’t put Jake off and he set about repeating his first race result.
At the start of the race Jake banged bars with a few riders going up the start straight, this put Jake near the rear of the field but kept focused and chased the pack in front, but with 9 laps gone Jake had to retire due to the misfiring problem.
Race two didn’t go quite to plan for Jason either, after battling with Erik Eggens for 15th position, Jason found himself back in 22nd after a slight mishap in the whoop section.
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Mark Chamberlain – Team Manager Fork-Rent Suzuki
“The MX2 class this year is so tough and it was great to have two Fork-Rent Suzuki riders lining up in both races, Jake was awesome in qualifying and now has the taste of what its like to race Grand Prix’s, Jake made one mistake all weekend and will learn from that and focus his efforts on the next round in Italy.
Jason struggled a little this weekend but showed by his lap times that he can certainly run top ten, Jason will definitely bounce back and will undoubtedly get back to point scoring in Italy.”
Team schedule –
Grand Prix of Italy at Mantova 6th May
Grand Prix of Germany at Teutschenthal 13th May
Grand Prix of Japan at Sugo 27th May
More information on the team can be found here –