Tuesday 11th May 2010
GP of Portugal

Hi everybody,

I have mixed feelings about my Portuguese week-end, on a track that I like a lot.
As soon as the first practice I felt good, I was the only girl to pass all the jumps of the track, but unfortunately some rain came and changed everything.

Timed practice went not quite right, the track was very slippery at the beginning, I took the 4th time. At the end of the session the track became quite dry so I gave another try but I crashed with another rider, it was then impossible to restart the bike so I ended up with only the 6th fastest lap time.

First moto, I had a poor start at the gate drop and then I lost a few time with Laier and Papenmeier who crashed together at the first corner. I started my race 6th or 7th, I came back with no hurry to the leading position and I won the race with the fastest lap time which was quite encouraging considering my last GP in Bulgaria.


Sunday morning, muddy warm-up, it rained all night long so the organizers decided to reduce the practice to 10 minutes to keep the track which was already drowned a little. I did quite well in that session with the fastest time.

Two hours later, start of second moto on a one line track, the race will be tough. My gate drop was great but I was too much in the inside and had to brake too early so I started 3rd behind Kane and Mann. I did a mistake while passing Mann and got passed by Laier in the mean time. A few laps later Kane also did a mistake and Laier took the race lead. As it was very hard to pass on that track I became worried that Laier could extend the gap, so I started to hurry and tried to pass Kane on the right, on the left, and it ended... on the ground!

I tried to attack on the camel after the start but I was too short and went over the bar quite violently. I managed to restart behind Franke and Papenmeier, a little groggy... I found a line to pass Franke and started to attack Larissa but Maria passed both of us under a yellow flag and could pull away at the same time... I managed to pass Larissa and came back on Maria but could pass her and the chequered flag was out.


The team and I have worked a lot since Bulgaria. I had that injury last year but the gap with Steffi in terms of speed gets reduced little by little, I lost 17 points in Bulgaria, only 2 this week-end...

This week I will stay between Portugal and Spain to train like most of the riders. However we’ll keep it cool as I have a few sequels from my crash, all the left side of my body got hurt, from my shoulder to my hip with also the knee and the right thumb...

I feel more and more comfortable on the bike and I expect a lot of the next GP in Spain.

Photos : Sarah Gutierrez / Miquel A. Queralt