5 hours and a full tank later, we arrived at the accommodation 1st, ahead of some other Gamut riders who were going to be staying with us for the 2 weeks racing.

Practice started on Wednesday and the track had a few changes from last year in the form of a flat pedally section near the bottom of the track. Baltic set to work getting to know the track and before long it was time for qualifying. This years schedule has allocated less practise time which means qualifying is usually a bit unpredictable.

Ben came across the line in 18th position after a steady run with few mistakes. He was confident he could scrub another 4-5 seconds off his time for finals, so after a few doughnuts in the rental/rally car, we headed back home to get everything ready for tommorrows final.

Saturday morning came around and we got set up in the new Gamut pit tent. After a couple of warm up practise runs to check the condition of the track after some rain fall, Ben headed up to the start line with a clean bike and some fresh tear offs.

His run was good, and fast to begin with, he entered the rock garden and must have clipped a rock, bending the cage on his rear derailleur. He popped out and continued on without noticing until the pedally section came up. His cranks were jammed up for a moment, then he was able to put in a few pedal strokes here and there. He pushed on to the bottom keeping speed wherever he could and crossed the line with a 4:55, placing him in 27th place at the end of the day.

He knew he was riding well and with a clean run could have been up with the big dogs so is looking forward to Bromont and hopefully a clean fast run to see what he can really do results wise.

We’re off to the go kart track now to lay the law down and make Juan from Gamut eat his words about the fastest lap times.