Enduro European Championship at Bacau (Romania) - Day2

The Day2 of the second round of Enduro European Championship was held today at Bacau, in Romania. Despite the rain at night, the track was probably even better than the day before. In addition, there was not so much dust, which had partly led to visibility problems on the first day and the ground was partially more handy.
The leader of the overall championship, Italian Alessandro Battig, took his revenge. Yesterday he had lost a lot of time in the difficult uphill, where he had to push and fight, but things went smoothly for the Kawasaki rider today. Already in the first special-test of the day he was able to set the fastest time. In the new modified enduro test, in which the increasingly difficult uphill was cut out, he managed to gain the overall victory in the end of the day.

However, young Swede Erik Appelqvist finished dangerously close to him, and lost just one second, in the last lap. Appelqvist won the Junior class E2/E3 on his Yamaha ahead of yesterday’s overall winner Hugo Blanjoue (photo1). Nevertheless, the latter was the winner of his class, in front of Appelqvist and Battig (see photo of the pricegiving ceremony). With this results Blanjoue moves up to second place behind Battig in the championship.
Maurizio Micheluz repaired the suspension problems on his Husqvarna during the day and improved to fifth overall, winning the two-stroke class up to 250 cc.
Czech Jiri Hadek won again on his KTM in the two-stroke class over 250 cc:
In the four-stroke class up to 250 cc French Thomas Dubost won on the KTM ahead of Swiss Jonathan Rosse on Yamaha.
With his overall victory Alessandro Battig naturally also won his 4-stroke class over 250 cc, ahead of the Oliver Nelson and Rikard Hansson, both from Sweden.

Like yesterday, the Women’s class had to complete three instead of four laps of 50 km each. The day’s victory went to Finnish Sanna Kärkkäinen on KTM ahead of yesterday’s winner Nina Klink from the Netherlands.
The next round will be on August 11th and 12th in Skövde, in Sweden. Swedish riders, who have been successful so far, are reaping an additional home advantage that Italians have had already in their home country during the first round of the year.
Full results on FIM Europe website: http://www.fim-europe.eu/events/539
More information and schedules, results and links, on the official website: http://european-enduro.com/
Photos ©Robert Pairan