Story: Noel Flatters | Editor - Enduro.Media
January 6th, 2023

GP Germany - Round 3 of the FIM SuperEnduro World Championship - took place tonight and like the first two rounds the big question was if anyone had an answer for #57 Billy Bolt (Husqvarna Factory Racing). As it turned out, despite Bolt suffering what looked to be a severe left leg/knee injury in timed practice, the answer remained (remarkably!) ‘No’ as he went 1-1-3 for the win.

The Bottom Line Up Front

• Billy Bolt landed awkwardly on a pipe feature during timed qualifying, with his left leg getting twisted after he came off the peg. Replays of the incident showed him to be in immediate severe pain, basically falling off the bike after riding it out off of the obstacle.

• #22 Jonny Walker (Beta Racing) appeared to be in a perfect situation to close the points gap to the defending series champion, but a series of unforced errors while leading races 1 and 2 on the night allowed Bolt to still win the round. Walker was able to win the final race of the night and finish second overall with his 2-2-1 finishes. After this (and assuming that Bolt is able to race Round 4 at GP Romania on January 20th) I’m struggling to see how Walker can challenge Bolt for the Championship overall.

• #12 Will Hoare (Beta) had come into Round 3 in P3 overall over finishing third in each of the first two rounds, but the magic ran out a little bit (at least for tonight) for him. P5 wasn’t the result he wanted but it was enough for him to keep third overall in the series.

• Home crowd favourite Manuel Lettenbichler (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) managed to get himself onto the podium for the first time in the series with a 4-3-5 performance.

• Bolt continues to lead the series with 182 points, ahead of Walker (146 points) and Hoare (117 points).

The story

The big story coming into the night was if someone maybe had something for Billy Bolt after he took out the wins in GP France and GP Poland to start the series 2 for 2. Jonny Walker had seemed to come alive a little bit more in Round 2, and there was a feeling that he just might have an outside shot at derailing the Bolt. This all changed in rather dramatic fashion before the main event started when Bolt landed awkwardly on a pipe feature in timed practice and clearly hurt his left leg/knee. Replays showed his leg twisting awkwardly as he saved himself from coming up short on the feature, and while he managed to ride it out he quickly rolled himself off the bike and onto the ground in what appeared to be severe pain. It appeared questionable if he could even make the start, but he managed to push through and line up for the Superpole time trial where he ended up P2 behind Jonny Walker. “I’m definitely not feeling too great after qualifying. Hurting quite a lot, and will see what we can do with one leg.”

Ultimately the night would be a story of Bolt vs. Walker, and how Walker let an opportunity get away from him.

Moto 1
This was an unexpected but golden opportunity for Walker to win the round and take some serious points back from Bolt as it still wasn’t 100% clear how Bolt’s leg would take three motos of racing on the night. Off the technical start Walker took the holeshot, but Bolt was right there with him and quickly blew past before the end of the first lane to take the lead. Walker was able to make the pass back on lap 3, however, as Bolt struggled going up the flyover and then looked very slow in the sand pit just before the finish jump. With two laps to go Walker had a 1 lane/8 second lead and appeared to be cruising for the win when he appeared to stall the bike on the rocks at the entry to the flyover feature. He got going again, but had lost a massive chunk of his lead to Bolt who poured it on before making the pass on the white flag lap. Bolt was still clearly in a great deal of pain as he came across the line, but it was an incredibly gutsy ride by the Brit. The question was if he could do it again. Bolt spoke about how he was just trying to manage the gap to Walker, especially when saw that Walker was perhaps not pushing as hard as he should have been despite his lead.

Moto 2
With the reverse start order for the second race of the night it was German Tim Appole (Beta Racing) who took the holeshot in commanding fashion. Will Hoare came out in P2 ahead of Walker and Lettenbichler, with Bolt in 5th. Walker got past teammate Appole in fairly short order to take the lead, but it was interesting to see them race each other hard through the corner leading to the underpass knowing the bad blood that had developed between them back in the USA during Endurocross when Appole took out Walker while Walker was lapping him. Fortunately there were no fireworks this time around. Bolt managed to work his way into P2, but Walker had stepped out to an 8.5 second lead more than a lane ahead of Bolt. Here’s where things got interesting, though…

A digression - Back in the Endurocross series last Fall, it was pretty clear from trackside that Walker was struggling with adversity. He won the first two rounds with perfect 1-1-1 performances and appeared to be cruising to a repeat of his 2022 series championship. In Round 3, however, he got into trouble in the first moto of the night with an unforced error while leading in the matrix and eventually lost the round to Canadian Trystan Hart (FMF KTM Factory Racing). Walker never seemed to recover on the night, and whenever there was a pileup on track he seemed to be in it. He was visibly frustrated, and from that point never won another moto in the series. Despite that he was still in control of his own fate going into the finale in Reno, NV. If he finished ahead of Hart on the night he would repeat as champion. Again, though, he couldn’t rally after unforced errors and lost the round and the series to Hart. It left a big question mark (for me at least) as to how he could get this under control for SuperEnduro. Don’t get me wrong here, Walker is a tremendous talent and a great person. He just wasn’t showing the ability to bounce back from issues, and in Endurocross/SuperEnduro there’s ALWAYS going to be an issue.

So what was the point of that digression? Well, in moto 2 tonight Walker made an unforced error going over the tire feature while leading Bolt by the previously mentioned 8.5 seconds, losing 3,5 seconds in the process. Normally this would be a simple ‘whoops’ moment. But in the context of Walkers struggles with adversity and his loss to an injured Bolt after an unforced error while leading moto 1, there was (for me at least) an immediate feeling of ‘here we go again.’ Sure enough, the next time over the same feature Walker had a bigger self-induced mistake that allowed Bolt to eventually catch and pass him before the finish… again.

Moto 3
Going into the final race of the night the pressure was squarely on Walker’s shoulders. He desperately needed a win to (a) keep the points gap to Bolt close, and (b) presumbaly restore his confidence. To his credit Walker did rise to the occasion this time out of the gate. He took the holeshot convincingly and then finally put together a smooth, quick, and safe race. Bolt had managed to stay on his wheel for the first few laps before having an issue of his own on the same tire feature that had tripped up Walker in Moto 2. Bolt did, though, still manage to put time back into Walker after this, putting one to two seconds a lap into him in another gutsy as hell ride. Bolt actually made it back to Walker’s rear wheel on the final lap before taking himself out going up the flyover. The man just doesn’t have any quit in him.

Race Notes

• After the race Walker noted that his issue in Moto 1 was the result of misstep in the matrix where he jumped a little sideways on the quad, landed on a perimeter log and bending his rear brake pedal under the footpeg. In his mind he was lucky to finish that race.

• In Bolt’s post-race interview he spoke about how much his leg was hurting - “There was no option, I was riding regardless. I was either coming out of here with a result or being carried out of here.”

• Bolt also noted that in the last moto “It was my own stupid mistake” that led to his bobble on the final lap.

• Lettenbichler quietly had one of the rides of the night in the final moto to get P5 and save his P3 overall for the round. He crashed hard off the start, ending up in dead last. He had to get to the front of his bike to straighten the front end before continuing, losing what looked to be at least a lane’s worth of distance to the next-to-last rider.

• Hungarian Norbert Zigovics crashed in timed practice and broke his finger. I checked in with his team and they let me know that he now has wires in his finger for the next three weeks, followed by six weeks of rehab. He wants to be back on the bike as soon as possible to be back in time for his home race at the Hungarian GP on February 3rd.

GP GERMANY Results

Overall Classification after GP GERMANY / Round 3