Toni Bou (Montesa) and Emma Bristow (Sherco) maintained their perfect starts in the FIM Hertz 2024 Trial World Championship on the second day of the Taisei Rotec TrialGP in Japan, with victorious performances in the main TrialGP and TrialGP Women classes, consolidating their wins from yesterday. Jack Peace (Sherco) finished today on top in Trial2.
- Toni Bou and Emma Bristow maintain their perfect starts to the season
- Dan Peace secures his first win of the year in Trial2
- Taisei Rotec TrialGP in Japan kicks off the 2024 series successfully
With the severity of several sections at Mobility Resort Motegi slightly increased after the first day of action on Saturday, record holder Bou – who is aiming to claim his eighteenth consecutive TrialGP title this season – delivered a masterclass in front of a huge crowd of twelve thousand spectators.
Although rain threatened, the day remained hot and dry, resulting in conditions similar to yesterday, with grip still a rare commodity on the nearly vertical sections of the track.
A maximum in section six, when he was judged to have rolled back with his foot on the ground, was the only major blemish on his first round of ten points, giving him a four-point lead over a revitalized Adam Raga (Sherco), with Gabriel Marcelli (Montesa), who was second yesterday, completing the top three Spaniards with fifteen points halfway through the competition.
Fans of trial are used to seeing Bou deal with pressure in closely contested events before ramping up the intensity against his opponents, and he did not disappoint with a total of nine points in the second round, putting the victory out of reach for his rivals.
At forty-two years old, two-time champion Raga is the veteran of the class, but his team and machinery change in the preseason clearly motivated him, and by adding just eleven more points in his second round, he secured a comfortable second place – his best result since 2022 – while twenty-four-year-old Marcelli accumulated sixteen more points.
Marcelli’s hopes of catching up to Raga effectively ended in section ten, where he was extremely unlucky to get a maximum in the second round due to a puncture, although this late drama never threatened to take him off the podium, and he still finished seven points ahead of his compatriot Aniol Gelabert (TRRS) at the end of the day.
The top five was completed by Frenchman Benoit Bincaz (Sherco), who finished one position higher than yesterday, with a total of forty-three points, after surpassing Italian Matteo Grattarola (Beta) in the tense final stages.
There was more misfortune for Jaime Busto (GASGAS), the vice-champion of TrialGP in the last two seasons. Technical problems limited the Spanish rider to ninth place yesterday, and he faced difficulties again today, dropping to a disappointing seventh place, which is a major blow to his hopes of dethroning Bou at the end of the season.
Bristow is aiming to close out her career in the top tier with a tenth TrialGP Women’s title in eleven years, and the thirty-three-year-old British star, who plans to retire at the end of the season, claimed her second victory of the weekend – although it was a close contest.
Spanish rider Berta Abellan (Scorpa) made a sensational initial lap of just two points to lead the defending champion by eleven points before experiencing technical issues halfway through the second lap. While Bristow picked up the pace, adding only five points to her total, Abellan accumulated marks in the last seven sections of the Trial and dropped to third place with a total of thirty-seven points, ten behind Italy’s Andrea Sofia Rabino (Beta).
