Coppins makes work of ‘Keiheuvel’ sand

Josh Coppins is not normally a contender of the Belgian champs however the Kiwi had two reasons to ride the 5th round held in Balen today. The first reason being that Balen is Coppins’s surrogate home town and second because the rough and demanding sand circuit would give the CAS Honda team perfect opportunity to test some settings for the upcoming GP to be held in Lierop, in similar sandy conditions.

Coppins missed his usual great starts all day which left the Kiwi with a lot of sand eating to do as he fought his way through the pack. A crash with sand specialist Marc de Reuver in the final race put Coppins out of the top five however ‘Lizzard’ was still optimistic about the day’s results:

“Results wise it wasn’t such a good day but that was not what we came here for. We came here to work on the bike for Lierop and we made many changes each race. We had a few small problems but luckily we have managed sort them out before the GP. I was happy with my speed but I struggled with my starts. We managed to improve on the starts in the last race. All in all I’m happy with the day and happy with the progress we made.”

Race 1:
1. Townley, 2. Ramon, 3. Everts, 4. De Reuver, 5. Breugelmans, 6. Strijbos, 7. Smets, 8. Boonen, 9. Coppins, 10. Verhoeven
Race 2:
1. Everts, 2. Ramon, 3. Townley, 4. Smets, 5. De Reuver, 6. Coppins, 7. Strijbos, 8. Melotte, 9. De Dijcker, 10. Verhoeven
Race 3:

1. Everts, 2. Smets, 3. Ramon, 4. Breugelmans, 5. Melotte, 6. Strijbos, 7. De Reuver, 8. Van Daele, 9. Coppins, 10. Swanepoel