Spanish pre-season testing
Thirteen year old Ballinamallard boy Josh Elliott returned on Monday from an amazing experience during his Easter school holidays. He flew out to Portugal on 21st March for the third and final Red Bull Rookies test at Estoril the following two days, and then drove across to Jerez in Spain to compete in his first Moto GP. Not your typical school Easter break action it could be said!
After a good test in Estoril, Ireland’s ‘Rookie’ was looking forward to giving his first grand prix a real go.
With the buzz about the paddock it would have been very easy to become overawed by it all, but the Fermanagh youngster kept his feet on the ground and the job in hand. Having said that, a chance meeting with his hero, seven times world champion Valentino Rossi did add to the excitement in a big way.
On Thursday evening as all the teams were making final preparations for official practice the next day, Josh was walking up pit lane when Rossi walks out of his pit garage and over to the youngster. “Are you one of the Rookies?” he asked. Briefly going a bit weak with shock, Josh chatted to Valentino for some minutes about who he was, where he was from etc, and the famous Rossi had a hearty laugh about Josh’s race name, ‘Jossi’ and told him he would keep an eye out for him. Rossi was just going out to run the track with a few other riders and crew and invited Josh to come along. Naturally he accepted and listened as Rossi explained some racing lines. What a special start to your first GP weekend?
“It was really special to meet Valentino Rossi. He was really good fun, joking and laughing. I think it was because I tried to treat him like an ordinary guy and not get over the top excited like I saw so many do over the weekend,” Josh commented. “Hopefully I can get to talk to him again at the next round as he promised to sign my helmet some time for me.”
First free practice brought back some handling problems that Josh had in his test at Jerez in February. He was 21st and after some small adjustments improved to 17th in timed qualifying.
Race one was held on Saturday after Moto GP qualifying, and a very poor start, saw Josh struggling three from last on the first lap. It was soon evident that something was not right as he was lapping two to three seconds off his qualifying pace.
As the 15 lap race unfolded Josh started moving closer to some riders ahead of him. His front brake was fading badly and he adjusted his riding to suit, pumping the brake early to get slowed for the corners. He caught and passed two riders just before the flag to get an amazing 10th place and 6 valuable points. Some big crashes in the group ahead of him helped his position, but to his credit he rode a mature race given his lack of experience.
He started Race two on GP day from finishing position of 10th and hoped to get a good start to run with the faster guys. The race was delayed as the King of Spain was given a pit lane walk and shook hands with some of the Rookies including Josh. “That was a bit weird,” Josh said. “I honestly didn’t know who it was. I knew it was someone important as there were a lot of security people about. He shook hands with three of the Spanish riders and then me and two others."
Unfortunately as his race got under way he was to be hit again with mechanical problems and this time not only did the brakes fade again, but he had gear selection troubles with first and fourth gear. Despite loosing time the struggled on for a finish, but was just outside the points in 16th.
Julian, Josh’s dad reflects on the weekend, “Although Josh was a bit disappointed with the way things went, this was a massive event for your first world championship race. The guys at Red Bull KTM had a big job preparing and maintaining so many bikes, as a result little problems are always going to happen with individual machines. 131,000 people are thought to have attended as the fans in Spain are fanatical about their Motorcycle racing. To go away with points and two finishes is something to build upon. This is a massive learning curve for him and at this stage, steady progress is very important. We can look forward to Portugal in two weeks time where I think he can better his result”.