Last weekend, Eve and Cassandra Bélanger made the trip to the Blue Diamond MX track in Delaware to attend her first ever US Womens Pro-am race. Some of the fastest womens in the US were in attendance, including current WMX points leader Mackenzie Tricker, Marissa Markelon and Jacqueline Strong just to name a few.
The track was very fun to ride with some very high speed turns and fun jumps. Upon lining up for the fisrt un-timed practice, Eve realized they had a concrete start pad.... she hates those and never had the chance to practice on one since her mini bike days. The second (timed) pratice went good, she was able to secure the 7th fastest time, really close to 5th and 6th place riders.
She messed up her concrete pad practice start real bad on route to the sight lap but had a fairly decent one off the start of the first moto.
She then realized these girls are not messing around and got pushed wide all around the first lap, She was all the way back to 12 at one point and came back by the mechanic area in 8th place. Eve then started to get in her groove and started reeling in some of the girls and was now sitting in 4th by lap 6th and closing on 3rd place rider J. Strong. Position 3-4-5 and 6 were all within a couple of second as they ran into lappers. Eve eventually got messed up by a lapper and went down in a corner but was able to get going quickly (thanks to her Rekluse clutch) and only lost 2 positions. She ended up finishing 6th but knew that with a good start she could easily be top 5.
She messed up her concrete pad practice start real bad on route to the sight lap but had a fairly decent one off the start of the first moto.
She then realized these girls are not messing around and got pushed wide all around the first lap, She was all the way back to 12 at one point and came back by the mechanic area in 8th place. Eve then started to get in her groove and started reeling in some of the girls and was now sitting in 4th by lap 6th and closing on 3rd place rider J. Strong. Position 3-4-5 and 6 were all within a couple of second as they ran into lappers. Eve eventually got messed up by a lapper and went down in a corner but was able to get going quickly (thanks to her Rekluse clutch) and only lost 2 positions. She ended up finishing 6th but knew that with a good start she could easily be top 5.
Eve's Duroy KTM #41 and Cassandra #9 Unfortunatly, the second race didn't go as planned and the concrete pad got the best of her as she couldn't control the traction of her powerfull KTM 250 2 stroke. She rounded up the first corner in around 14 place. Eve put her head down and started to charge through the field. Eve climbed the rank all the way up to 6th place by lap 7. By that time, the group ahead of her had already stretched the lead and 5th place rider Amanda Brown was a good 15 second in front. Eve was able to close the gap a little but not enough to really be a challenge to Amanda.
At the end of the day, her 6-6 score was just enough for a 6th place overall. On a positive note, set aside the top 2 rider, Eve was running about the same lap times as 3 to 5th place riders
Eve and Cassandra getting prepared before first pratice
Next weekend we resume a 3 weeks break of our Quebec provincial serie at the X-Tring park in Tring-Jonction.
Again, Eve would like to thank everyone who supports her and makes all this possible :
Again, Eve would like to thank everyone who supports her and makes all this possible :
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