Italian Gianluca Tournour (Gas Gas), Frenchman Pierre Sauvage (Sherco) and Italian Valter Feltrinelli (Sherco) climbed the top of the podium, respectively in the Europe, Junior and Over40 classes in the first round of the 2015 FIM Europe Championship as well as second day of competitions within the special area for any kind of off-road vehicles of Pietramurata, near Trento, Italy.
In spite of the very good weather and the very dry terrain, in all the classes the difficulties chosen by the organizers were insidious enough to make riders work hard, especially because some of them were not at their ease under the no stop rules, also because in some national championships these rules havenot been applied, yet.
New record of entries in the top class: 32, with a total of 105 riders taking their start today. This fact can only confirm how these series continue to be appreciated by the majority of those riders that have anbitions, but also prefer to compete containing their costs as much as possible.
Today to assign the victory in the Europe class the discriminating factor of the number of “cleans” was necessary. Tournour won against Frenchman Steven Coquelin (Gas Gas, in the photo) by one single “zero” more, both scoring 21 points in the two loops of 15 sections each, but Tournour could count on 19 cleans against 18 done by Coquelin. The Italian who competes nowadays in the Spanish championship, the most quoted in the world, started soon very well collecting fantastic passages, but compromised his leadership in the last two sections of the first lap: fiving both, his score grew up to 14 errors and he was overtaken by Coquelin (11) and Spanish Francesc Moret,Vertigo, (13). The second lap of Tournour was simply a masterpiece. Two times “2” and three “1”, which meant a total of 7. Coquelin almost repeated the previous score (10) and was reached and beaten by “cleans”. Moret filled in the last step of rostrum.
Absolutely dominated by one rider the Junior class. Sauvage’s victory was never in doubt. He started delivering his card at the end of the first lap with 8 points. In second position Norwegian Julian Berntsen (Gas Gas), who made 11 mistakes. In his second lap, he touched the ground with his foot only 3 times. Bernsten worsened a bit, scoring 15, but kept the second place ahead of German Max Faude (Beta), who scored in total 32.
Still a clear victory in the Over 40 class. Feltrinelli put a serious option on whom would have been the winner, scoring one single mark in the whole first loop. Dutch John Van Veelen (Ossa) made 11 mistakes, same result for Slovakian Vladimir Kothay (Ossa). Van Veelen gained the satisfaction of beating the winner in the second loop (5 to 6 the scores), but this let him only to pull ahead of Kothay reaching the runner-up positions.
In the two International classes Germans and Italians occupied the positions on podium.
German Tobias Muller (Beta) won the most difficult one, while Italian Mattia Petronio (Gas Gas) triumphed in the International 2.
Results can be found on our website at the link: http://www.fim-europe.eu/site/index.php?eid=15
Round 2 and 3 will be held in Luserna San Giovanni, near Turin, Italy, on the 18th and 19th of July.
