60 Second Update: ISDE – Day 2

France hold station at the top of the World Trophy Team classification, Antoine Meo tops the overall individual results, and the dust doesn’t get any better. Here’s what we know about day two…

The dust sucks. It wasn’t too bad on some of the tests, but on others the dust cloud above the tests could be seen from miles away… we kid you not. For a lot of riders racing through what was at times blinding dust was anything but fun. Ironically, for some riders, like Australian Josh Green and Britain’s Jamie Lewis, getting stuck in the day’s one and only bog was the biggest problem.

With Antoine Meo getting the hang of racing a 300cc two-stroke, and with Johnny Aubert and Pela Renet getting their grove on, France topped the World Trophy Team class by close to three minutes. It’s early days but France aren’t going to get beaten unless they seriously screw up.

Daniel Milner continued to impress by placing second overall, just 11 seconds behind Meo. Milner crashed on the final test of the day but was otherwise on fire aboard his 450cc Yamaha. Power seems to be all-important as the highest placed E1 class rider on day two was Spain’s Cristobal Guerrero in 11th.

In the Junior World Trophy class France took the win as they did on day one. A little over one-minute ahead of Italy they extended their overall lead. Great Britain moved to third from their fourth place result on day one, just 22 seconds behind Italy. The US place fourth with Sweden and Australia fifth and sixth.

A few riders picked up time penalties on day two. US Junior Trophy rider Kailub Russell picked up a two-minute penalty when he suffered ‘brain fade’ at a time control. Alex Salvini finished in 69th position, which he was anything but pleased with. Getting to bed gone midnight having been forced to go to hospital to have a nail sized thorn surgically removed form his forearm, he then broke a footpeg, rode three hours on one lag, and dropped three minutes getting a new footpeg fitted. Salvini is officially having a shocker.

The special test winners on day two were Daniel Milner, Daniel Milner, Antoine Meo, Johnny Aubert, Antoine Meo, and Antoine Meo… Meo ended up as the overall fastest rider. No, it didn’t take him long to adjust to a 300cc two-stroke!