Fourth place and fastest lap for Vlaanderen in Czech Qualifier

After his podium performance in Semarang at the last round, Team HRC’s Calvin Vlaanderen continued his strong return from injury with an impressive fourth place in the MXGP of the Czech Republic qualification race.

Like his MXGP team mate Tim Gajser, Vlaanderen was fastest in MX2 free practice and second in timed practice, which gave him second gate pick for the qualification race. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to capitalise on this though, as he almost got caught up in a first turn incident with a bunch of other riders. Eventually the Honda CRF250RW rider crossed the line for the first time in 11^th place and set about trying to pass those riders in front of him. For the first seven laps of the race, Vlaanderen picked off one rider per lap and although he did briefly get into third place, he wasn’t able to make the pass stick. A small mistake on the last lap meant he had to settle for fourth, but after posting the fastest lap of the race coming through the field, he knows that with a better start he can challenge at the front of the field once again.

Tomorrow, Vlaanderen has a warm up session at 10:25am, which is then followed by the two main races at 12:15 and 15:10 where he will be hoping to keep this good recent run going and aim for a another podium position.