They say you win championships on your bad days. The days when everything goes wrong but you hang in there to make the most of it and accumulate what points you can. So for Elliott Banks-Browne and the Geartec Husqvarna team to come through the second round of the MX Nationals at Preston Docks on the podium in second position, and moving to second in the standings, is a massive achievement considering all that befell them on the day.
From the outset the Team knew they would be up against it as a practice crash for Elliott trashed his number 1 machine and injured his wrist. With just a lap of practice to his name, it meant race one would be his first real track time of the day on the newly laid out circuit.
With a lowly gate pick, Elliott managed to make the best of it and descended from the new downhill start gate in a good position and hustled his way into second behind Jake Nicholls. After a few laps Elliott noticed something was wrong with the front end of his machine but he brought it home for second before finding out after that one side of his forks had broken completely.
With the forks repaired Elliott set out in Moto 2, and with a bad start he was already up against it when a battle ahead of him saw two rider’s clash and unable to avoid the melee he hit one of their back wheels and crashed going down on his already injured wrist. Pushing through the pain, amazingly Elliott managed to pick off positions to finish 3rd in MX 1 to give him second overall.
Paul Mason – Team Manager
“We started off with a good crash in practice and Elliott injured his wrist, and then unbeknown to us he was riding with a damaged fork in the first moto but bringing it home in second was a good result and was as good as we were going to get in the circumstances. After hurting his wrist again in the second race it was a real gallant performance, and after a very hard day we came second overall so we are really happy with that.”
Elliott Banks-Browne
“We had a lot of issues today, starting with the big crash in practice on a jump. We are not really sure what happened, if I stalled it, or something happened to the bike, but it didn’t miss a beat for the rest of the day. It was coming up to a jump and it kicked really bad and I had to jump off and it ruined the bike so meant I only got one lap of practice in, and hurt my wrist pretty good.
So the day was all about making the best of it really.
Then in race one the bike didn’t feel right so I kept within myself and brung it home for second and after the race we found the forks had been damaged, so to just finish that race was good ,and to come second was even better. In the second race I made a bad start and then had another crash hitting another rider’s back wheel and twisted my wrist that I hurt in practice.
After that I was really struggling but I got past some of the other riders and got up to third in MX1 which was as good as I could do with the pain, but I was lucky really to walk away with nothing more than a hurt wrist. It’s not a track I really like, so after what happened in practice to finish second overall was not too bad a performance”.
The team now move onto Hawkstone Park this weekend for the third round of the MX Nationals with Elliott now sitting in second position in the Pro MX1 standings.