We continue our journey on the most beautiful and spectacular roads of France with Nicolas for the French Mountain Championship. Discover his impressions on the last two races: La Pommeraye and Hébecrevon
On the 9th and 10th of May, we were in the west of France near Angers to compete in the 4th round of the French Mountain Bike Championship: the La Pommeraye hill climb. It is a rather atypical race with 2 changes of direction at the beginning of the course and in the upper part of the circuit : At the top of the circuit there is a fast section called "le plateau" where you have to have very tight trajectories between the safety rails. Here we reached the highest average speed of the Championship (over 160 km/h). Despite the threatening weather, we had a dry road all weekend.
Tests: At the end of the tests I was 3rd behind Lionel REGAL and Sébastien PETIT, we worked on the car throughout the heats with a satisfactory behaviour at the end of the day.
Race : During the first race I started with the objective to make a good time but with a little mistrust because a competitor having lost oil, the organizers decided to neutralize the meeting to clean correctly the track (I take advantage of it to congratulate them for the quality of their work). I then set the best time with one tenth ahead of Lionel REGAL and 2 tenths ahead of Sébastien PETIT. The weather being more than threatening, in the 2nd heat I decide to put 4 new tyres (like REGAL and PETIT). I started very motivated and made a great attack with a great time of 55'8 relegating Lionel REGAL to 7 tenths and Sébastien PETIT to 1'3.
In the last heat I started with the knife between my teeth, perhaps a little too much so as I made a few slips which penalised me and I was unable to improve. Lionel REGAL drew on his last resources and passed me by 8 hundredths of a second.
Podium: 1st REGAL 55'767 / 2nd Nicolas SCHATZ at 0’079 / 3rd Sébastien PETIT at 0'271
In the championship: 1st Lionel REGAL 142 pts / 2nd Sébastien PETIT 122 pts / 3rd Nicolas SCHATZ 116 pts
Although I was beaten on the post in the last heat for a small gap, I am satisfied with this performance because I led the race from start to finish except in the last heat. The car worked well, we found a good setup and the team did a great job.
On the 16th and 17th of May, we were in Calvados to compete in the 4th round of the French Mountain Championship: the Hébecrevon race. This race is characterized by a beginning of course on a very narrow road between the rails with a change of direction to take a very broad road, rather fast. Despite very threatening weather we had dry weather all weekend except for the free practice round on Sunday morning.
Tests : At the end of the tests I finished 2nd behind Lionel REGAL. During these tests I fought a lot with the car which had a very tricky rear end.
Race : The first race was done on a half dry road, after a good attack I realize the best scratch time with a 5 tenths advance on Lionel REGAL in spite of unstable car in the fast. During the second heat, I increased the pace by doing a nice climb in 59'1 (4 tenths of my 2008 record) with still some slippage, but Lionel REGAL did better for only 5 hundredths of a second! Everything was going to be played out in the last run, I started very concentrated and made a faultless start, but after the change of direction in a fast bend where there was not too much difficulty the car escaped from me and I hit the rail from the front which prevented me from defending my chances.
Podium : 1 Lionel REGAL - 58'44 / 2 Nicolas SCHATZ - 59'1 / 3 Sébastien PETIT - 59'8
Championship : 1 Lionel REGAL – 180 pts /2 Sébastien PETIT – 150 pts / 3 Nicolas SCHATZ – 148 pts
Summary: I am obviously disappointed to have made this touch especially as I do not really understand the cause of this behavior. So we'll go back and put the car back to the "2008 chassis" configuration which was satisfactory. »
To see the video of the crash: Youtube
#testimony #schatz #race