Joel Roelants is new MX2 Junior World Champion

Belgian rider Joel Roelants is the new MX2 Junior World Champion. © R. Verhagen. Jacky Martens had to slow Joel down at his first GP-MX2 last week in Namur in order not to score regular worldchampionship-points. A wise decision because this would have meant exclusion from the Junior-MX Worldchampionship. One week later in Vantaa, Finland, Joel brought home the junior-title for himself and KTM-JMRacing at age 17.

Last year Joel didn´t even make it into the top 20 at the junior WC, this year he has won with authority ahead of Estonian Gert Krestinov and French Marvin Musquin.
Joel´s comment on things: "At saturday´s timepractice I set best time with a 2,5 sec. gap to Butron and I was feeling strong with my KTM perfectly dialed-in to the track-layout to with lots of cool jumps, and sand. In the first race my start wasn´t too good and I cornered in 7th position. From then on it took about 5 laps to work my way into leading position and I stayed out of trouble to win with a 21 second margin over Musqiun and Philippaerts. A perfect result although I was really nervous the first race. In the second race I crashed at the start and later on I crashed again to restart dead-last.I think I must have been out for about 30 seconds total. Still I managed to remonte to 4th positon, 10 cm short of Steven Clarke at the finish line who came in 3rd."

Jacky Martens, team manager said: "All JMracing are thrilled with fantastic achievement of our joungster!Joel was riding strong displayed superiour fysical condition kept him going especially thru second race wich started a bit eager. I am happy to see the progress he has been making,resulting in this worldchampionship at age 17 Joel is still learning and growing."
(KTM)

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