World Motocross Championships - Round 9 -
Uddevalla - Sweden

Wulfsport Honda celebrate best Grand Prix result in Sweden

Team Wulfsport Honda witnessed lead rider Gordon Crockard take his best Grand Prix result since 2003 and the highest classification for the team in their two year existence today at the Sweden round of the 2006 FIM MX1 World Championship with fifth position overall.

19,000 spectators lined the sun-soaked Uddevalla circuit that was being run in reverse compared to previous years and yielded several new jumps and sections. The terrain was still hard, bumpy and very dry due to the hot conditions and the rough surface was physically testing.

Crockard benefited from two decent starts that let him fight for positions inside the mid top ten. The Irishman, who has endured three seasons of injury nightmares, was seventh ahead of CAS Honda rider Ken De Dycker in the first outing and the enjoyed a juicy scrap with the Belgian’s team-mate and 2005 MX1 runner-up Josh Coppins later in the afternoon.
After touching once or twice Crockard made an aggressive move to steal fourth position stick, and the team were content with their most forceful representation in the premier class to-date.

Crockard has now risen to seventeenth in the World Championship standings.

Sadly the Irish squad were reduced to sole participation in the MX1 category as Shaun Simpson dislocated his shoulder while fighting for the podium on the final lap of the fifth round of the Maxxis British Championship last week at Desertmartin. The Scottish teenager is expected to be back on his Honda CRF 250 R by the start of August and will travel to Belgium to see specialist Dr Claes this week.
Martin Kohut was unlucky not to make the cut in the Last Chance practice and missed out on the sixth and last qualification spot by just two tenths of a second.

The tenth round of the World Championship will mark the end of the first two thirds of the 2006 campaign. The Grand Prix of South Africa will take place at the luxurious Sun City complex some 150km north-west of Johannesburg on July 15th/16th.

Gordon Crockard:
“It’s steadily coming back. I am really pleased I got fourth and especially for the team. I will keep trying and it has been a long road back. A various times I wondered if a result like this would ever happen again, so today was really nice. It is like being a youngster again! I was enjoying it out there. I was stuck behind Josh and I thought ‘this is going to be horrible’. There were parts where I was faster than him and then he was quicker than me; our lines were so different. I kind of passed him once but he ‘parked’ me, so I thought that gave me a green light to park him. He went right off the track and that was unlucky but it was a hard fight and you have to give as hard as you get.”

Shaun Simpson:
“We will go straight to Belgium from here to see Dr Claes who has helped Coppins and Rattray and a few other guys. We will have a scan to see if the ligaments are OK. The shoulder feels good and there is no pain whatsoever. Depending on what we find out we might start some physio this week to see how it is feeling and then build it up from there. Hopefully I might be back for the Czech GP at the end of the month or Namur at the beginning of August.”

Roger Magee, Team Manager and Owner:
“Gordon rode really well from the first free practice on Saturday this weekend and showed that this is what he can do if he gets out of the gate. In the second race he picked off the leading bunch one at a time and it was great to see him get right up into fourth. We didn’t get the podium this time but we are not too far away.”