Let’s say you’re on the A67 highway in the Netherlands, on your way to Germany for argument’s sake. It’s early Sunday morning, and your mind is numbing over with the boredom of the day ahead. By a strange quirk of fate, you take the offramp for Asten and Deurne, drive round one of the biggest roundabouts in existence believing yourself to be Sebastien Vettel, and slingshot yourself into the countryside. After driving through a quaint town or two, negotiating your way through a series of A – and B-roads, you hear a collective mechanical snort emanating from the trees adjacent to an industrial area. If such an unlikely chain of event happened to befall you on the right day, you could count yourself in luck. You happened upon the third round of the Dutch motocross championships in Gemert.
One might not expect it, but the Dutch are rabidly enthusiastic about their motocross racing. Their tracks are almost without fail in deep sand, as one can expect of a country, a great portion of which once formed part of Neptune’s domain. Now the uninitiated might thing that if you’re going to race off road, deep sand is the place to be. After all, it’s less forgiving than concrete hard ground, right? Not quite. You see, it’s like this. Deep sand likes to impede forward progress. A track made of the stuff forms deep ruts and bomb holes, so much so that no two laps on a sandy track are quite the same. Even the crashing is less forgiving. If you crash on a hard track, you will collect enough roasties to brag that you’ve been worked over with a power sander, that much is true, but in sand, if you crash, you stop suddenly. Very suddenly. Sand racing is very much an acquired art.
So much then for the theory. Tanel Leok is not a newbie in sand racing. He is a former dutch motocross champion, and one can assume therefore that he is fairly familiar with the requirements of going fast on this kind of terrain. The square-jawed hard man of motocross made the short trip form his Belgian base to Gemert to participate in the Dutch Championship event.
It was no surprise when the name that flashed at the top of the timing screens during qualifying belonged to one T. Leok. With the best gate pick, the Estonian got a good start in race one, checking out the lay of the land from third position. It was not long before he moved into the lead. With the luxury of open air ahead of him, he soon opened up a seemingly unassailable lead. on his Route 77 MVRD Honda. A few laps later, though, the bike starting producing noises that sounded for all the world as if it was the Costa Concordia being parked on the rocks by its captain. Not wishing to create total mayhem in the engine internals, Tanel headed for the pits, and his race was run.
After some quickfire repairs by his crew, Tanel was ready for race two. He blasted himself into proceedings in second spot, but it was not long before he got the better of Scotsman Shaun Simpson and again shot into the lead. He was now in full Estonian Express mode. This time he hoped to hold the lead in hand until the very end. Disaster very nearly struck again as he crashed hard with the race approaching its end. Fortunately, his lead was postal district-sized by now, and he could remount and still claim victory with a 14 second margin.
Tanel was desperately disappointed at having been forced to retire from a leading position in race one, which robbed him of a certain overall victory on the day. Still, a race win, a fastest qualifying time and the fastest lap in both races sort of gives an indication that he was in the hunt, speed-wise. As it was, he finished seventh overall for the day, which also represents his championship standing, seeing as he missed th first round of the series.
Tanel and Team are heading for the Southern tip of Europe next to participate in the Portuguese Grand Prix at Agueda.