Kawasaki Racing Team’s Tanel Leok was forced to work extra hard at the Grand Prix of South African on Sunday, bad starts dashed the twenty year old Estonia’s world championship hopes as he slips from 3rd to 4th in the 15 round series. Despite recovering from mid pack starts, Tanel fought back to finish fourth overall going 4 - 4 at the immaculate Sun City circuit but it was not enough to hold onto third position in the championship.
Two weeks after renewing his existing contract and extending his stay with the Dutch based Kawasaki squad until the end of 2008, Leok suffered a disappointing qualification session hampered by slower riders and minor mistakes on a deeply rutted circuit, on every attempt at a fast lap he failed and eventually took twelfth pick of the start gate his worst of the season so far. The Sun City venue, an arena circuit constructed on the edge of the magnificent oasis style holiday resort 180 kilometers north of Johannesburg, provided every man made obstacle possible and was superb condition with a well graded race surface and with the only criticism being the slower South African riders drafted into make up the normally packed line up in the premier MX1 category.
Starting in the middle of the start gate, Leok had his work cut out to get back inside of the top ten after his opening lap in both 35 minute plus two lap motos, in race one it was the lanky Belgian Ken De Dycker who provided the biggest obstacle, the two were setting a blistering pace and on lap 7 of 20 caught Cedric Melotte. De Dycker found away around his countryman but it was to take a further three laps before Tanel could make a pass stick and set about pursuing De Dycker. On lap 15 Leok found the opportunity to get a wheel in front and moved to fourth but third placed Ramon was simply too far ahead in the closing stages of the race with only four laps remaining. Tanel passed the chequered flag eight second and two points down on Ramon.
From that start of race two it was to be a similar story, Leok was boxed in at turn one leading into a tight right hander by the pack consisting of the other top ten European riders who made the trip to the Southern hemisphere. Not wanting to make a repeat of his race one errors he immediately started to attack the field, trying not to give the leading riders sufficient time to break away, by lap eight the ‘Estonian Express’ was up into 4th position and closing in on 3rd placed Ramon. Having used a lot of energy from the start of both motos Tanel backed off the throttle for a little but before he knew it Ramon’s teammate Kevin Strijbos was attacking and challenging him for 4th place, Tanel after his short rest bite was able to pick back up his pace and defend 4th position comfortably was unlucky yet again to miss out on podium glory but only four points.
Tanel Leok was Kawasaki Racing Team’s only representative in the premier MX1 class, team mate and development rider Bas Verhoeven is outside of the top fifteen rankings and was not selected for the trip to South Africa, he will be back in Grand Prix action with Leok in two weeks at Loket in the Czech Republic.
Tanel Leok:“Qualification was very frustrating for me and for many other riders who traveled to South Africa, the local riders were so slow they were a danger to everyone including themselves out on the circuit, I made a few mistakes which didn’t help and 12th position on the start gate was a result of my best time of the day, but my worst this season. We seemed to have a good set up with the bike, some riders were struggling with carburetion but my bike was strong right through the power-band.
I started in the middle of the gate but I got boxed in at the first turn, it took me a few laps to get going and then I was stuck behind De Dycker, I was concerned that the front group would beak away and that’s just what happened by the time I was up into 4th position I had left it too late to catch Ramon and I finished fourth. The track here is very demanding, but it’s well prepared. I had a local race in Estonia last week, I didn’t use too much energy so I still had a lot to offer this week, I think it was good fr me to have and easy race and it was better than resting up for the weekend before we traveled o this race.
I had to work hard to recover from the bad starts in both races, but I was happy with my condition. I almost hit Strijbos when he fell right in front on me on lap two, I almost hit him and almost collided with Barragan in a tight turn. I set about Avis and Pyrhonen and moved to 4th position again, Strijbos had followed me through and was starting to close so I was more concerned about defending my position rather than thinking about attacking Ramon. For sure I knew I needed the points that Ramon was taking but the poor starts had hampered me, once again I proved to be consistent in my results, 4th again, and inside the top five which is my goal plus I was happy with physical condition, it was only the starts let me down this weekend.”
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