New Zealand’s national enduro champion in 2020, Canterbury’s Hamish “Hammy Mac” Macdonald, has been busting berms worldwide for a little while now and today he reports back to us about his experiences racing in Sweden.
The Christchurch man, riding a Sherco, finished 7th overall and third in his E2 class in Sweden, round four of the World Enduro Championships series, maintaining his charge for an eventual overall podium finish for the 2021 season.
Meanwhile, fellow Kiwi James Scott (Honda), from Oparau, in the Waikato region, made his world enduro championship debut in Estonia a week ago and he marched on to tackle the Swedish event also.
Motocross specialist Scott finished a 24th overall and 11th overall in his E1 class at the weekend.
He now heads off to race in the motocross Grand Prix competition, entered in the European Motocross Championships in the 250cc class (EMX250).
Macdonald was meanwhile keen to give us a run-down of his enduro weekend in Sweden.
“It was two good days of racing the fast and rocky conditions that Sweden presented to us,” said Macdonald.
“It was fair to say that the conditions of the track weren’t up to world championship standard – they were fast, dangerous and rocky and the cross test was more like an Erzberg prologue.
“Three laps with nine special test throughout the day – an eight-minute Enduro test, 11-minute cross test and a three-minute extreme test.
“Saturday started off slow for me – hadn’t full recovered from last weekend’s race in Estonia but I can’t use this as an excuse.
“That feeling in the first lap of finding the flow, but came to grips with it in the second and final lap the speed was there. Too many mistakes but I had some good top five overall times throughout the day and I’m happy with my results.
“Pipped for overall fifth position by roughly 3 seconds, coming down to the final test but crashed in this test and it dropped me back to seventh position, but happy to land on the podium in my class.
“I got off to a decent start on Sunday but I still felt sluggish in the early tests of the first lap. Determined to stay focused and finish strong and coming through after the final test in sixth position scratch and third in E2 class.
“The weekend’s riding conditions were not favoured to my riding style. I’m a more technical rider and these conditions were far from that but overall it’s been a great learning curve and I can definitely see improvements. I’m satisfied leaving this race holding third position in my class in the standings.
“As the World Championship heads into summer break, we’ve heard that the German round will sadly not happen due to unfortunate COVID 19 circumstances. The final round will be in France in October if they do not replace Germany with another round.
“Meanwhile, I’m heading to Germany for the first round of the German Enduro championship this weekend. They have a brilliant championship and I’m looking forward to getting back to some great riding.”
Photo supplied
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