2005 Indoor World Trial Championship Round 1
8/1/2005 - FM Sheffield Arena, the United Kingdom
Fuji finished on the podium for his 'Four-Stroke' debut game.
2005 season has kicked off as the first round of Indoor Trial Championship
took place at Sheffield in the United Kingdom. The venue is close from
Dougie Lampkin's hometown, and he has been dominating the Sheffield
round since 1997.
Martin Lampkin, the father of Dougie was in charge of section coordination
as previous years. This year, Martin concentrated on reducing the degree
of risk of the riders by lowering the height of staircases. However
the level of challenge became higher as he created the sections technically
more demanding. It worked well, and all the riders except Dougie Lampkin
could not complete their qualification lap in time. Fujinami said after
the event that it was not only temporally tough, but also physically
very demanding.
The Sheffield round saw the debut of 4-stroke RTL250F. Although Fuji
knew the potential of the new machine and being satisfied with it from
his intensive outdoor test sessions, he was not sure how it would work
at indoor event. Fuji was pleasantly surprised the way new machine
worked at Indoor, which the performances much better than he expected.
The starting order for the first round was decided according to the
final standing of 2004 Outdoor championship. However, the regulation
was changed for this year, that for the rest of the season, the riders
would take turns the order: unlike previous year where it was decided
by a ballot. There was a protest posted by the Raga camp, claiming
that Indoor's starting order should have decided by the Indoor Trial
standings, but their protest wasn't granted.
The 2004 Outdoor champion Fujinami started from the last for the qualification,
and it gave him time to set up his game plan. Watching other riders
struggling to complete the lap in time, Fuji decided to take it easy
on section 4 and 5; two of the most difficult sections, to preserve
his time so that he could take more time on other sections. His plan
paid off, and he managed to keep his time-penalty for just 1 point.
When Fuji lined up with Lampkin for the double-lane, he had no intension
to challenge Lampkin. Fuji had advantages to proceed to the play-off,
so he did not want to take a risk to ruin his chance. The last thing
he wanted to see was trying too hard and being fived. On the other
hand, Lampkin knew that his chance for the play-off was very slim,
so as his loyal fans did.
So, Raga, Cabestany and Fuji were three to proceeded to the play-off.
Cabestany fived opening 3 sections, so the battle looked to be Raga
and Fuji for the victory at first. But Fuji also fived 3 sections in
a row from section 3 to 6, so the battle of 2nd and 3rd place became
very close. Cabestany and Fuji fought closely in point until section
8. At section 9, it looked to be that Cabestany fived, but for some
reasons, he was called for 1. Both Cabestany and Fuji marked clean
for the remaining sections, thus Fuji could not turn over the point
gap. He had to settle for the 3rd place by 3 points short. It was unfortunate
3rd place for Fuji, but at least he accomplished his goal at the first
round, which the goal to finish on a podium every round this year.
The new 4-stroke machine that Fuji rode in UK round was a standard
RTL with some modifications with titanium parts and adjustment. Honda
is working hard to develop the 4-stroke machine fully ready for
the Outdoor season, and because the number of 4-stroke machine is limited,
they could not ship the 'works' machines to the UK round. Many
people at Sheffield were surprised with the performances of new 4-stroke
machine, but Fuji was surprised to know that even a standard 4-stroke
machine could perform that well. Honda may bring their 'works'
machines to the Indoor round close from their base in Barcelona.
Quote from Fujigas:
Indoor Trial World Championship 2005
Sheffield Indoor Trial |
Final Lap |
1. |
Adam Raga |
GasGas |
27 |
2. |
Albert Cabestany |
Sherco |
30 |
3. |
Takahisa Fujinami |
Repsol Montesa HRC |
33 |
Qualificarion Lap |
1. |
Adam Raga |
GasGas |
11 |
2. |
Albert Cabestany |
Sherco |
16 |
3. |
Takahisa Fujinami |
Repsol Montesa HRC |
20 |
4. |
Dougie Lampkin |
Repsol Montesa HRC |
23 |
5. |
Marc Freixa |
Repsol Montesa HRC |
27 |
6. |
Jeroni Fajardo |
GasGas |
29 |
7. |
Tadeusz Blazusiak |
GasGas |
32 |
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