By New to the roads scene this year, the European Series Road Racing Championship (ESR), the brainchild of Mountain Course racing returnee Laurent Hoffmann, has proven a huge hit with racers, teams, fans.
Chatting this morning, twice IRRC Supersport Champion Hoffmann, the co-Championship organiser, issued his thoughts on the ESR’s successful inaugural season.
“It went well the whole year, we started off from scratch, and we will see what happens, see how popular it gets but by the end of the year it was immense.
Every race was fully booked, full grids everywhere, no red flags, no big crashes so that was really important for our start off, but it went well, so I’m really-happy.”
Whilst TT and Manx GP affiliated action will not grace the ESR, for the fore-seeable future, the series hopes to branch out next year to Latvia.
“We are about to close that deal, we are in good contact with Bikernieki, we are just putting the dots and the points on the contract, so very soon hopefully we can announce this race.”
Twelve years since his last Mountain Course expedition (2014 TT Races), the Belgian ace is back at road racing’s ‘Power and The Glory’.
Astride the Bell Bikesport B&W (Brian and Wendy Hull) Racing Yamaha, Hoffmann stated the opportunity to pilot this machine is following a last-minute deal.
“That was something very last minute because I first had a deal with another team and last week of June, they said they would only concentrate on one rider so I couldn’t go with the team anymore, so I was like, ok now what.
But then the weekend after that we had the newcomers’ weekend here so I was like please help me because I have no idea who to contact and then Lee Bartram from the Manx Grand Prix organisation said I’m going to call around a bit because we want to have a guy like you on the grid.
Then in no time Francesco Faraldo came up and he said look if you want, we have the Bell Bikesport team for you, we have a nice Yamaha set-up, so if you want you can ride with us, so I said OK, great.”
Fourteenth quickest Supersport exponent yesterday, fastest newcomer, the twice Superbike race winner at the Horice ‘Czech TT,’ is taking a measured approach to the remainder of this year’s MGP competition.
“I have a goal in-my-head, but I am not going to say it until I reach it. I want to ride here stress free and that’s why I also didn’t share it on socials that I was coming here, now I am here of-course and pictures start popping up and people are starting to ask me are you at the Manx.
I want to approach it as lower profile as possible without any stress around my head and no pressure and so-on, am just riding as I feel confident and as I saw from the results yesterday the confidence is there. I still make mistakes of course but the confidence is there, I know where I am going, I know my tipping in points, I know the bike how it is going and so on, so I’m going to build from this point on and just go faster and faster every time I go out.”
Photo credit: Mark Corlett
Words by Stevie Rial #dontletfearcontrolyou
