OFF ROAD
91ST INTERNATIONAL SIX DAYS ENDURO
OCTOBER 11-16, 2016
KARTING CIRCUITO DE NAVARRA / NAVARRA, SPAIN
P60
wrong arrows, silly things like
that."
The U.S. World Trophy team
started the week strong, seizing
the lead immediately with Rus-
sell topping the very first test of
the day in dry, dusty conditions,
his time was 2.71 seconds quick-
er than the next-fastest rider,
who happened to be teammate
Robert. It doesn't get much bet-
ter than that. Duvall backed them
up with the eighth-best score.
By the end of the day, Team USA
found itself in front with 26.02
seconds over Italy, Great Britain
another 30.44 seconds behind.
Over the course of the week,
no one could make much of a
dent in that lead, which the U.S.
widened for the most part, cul-
minating with Robert going into
the final moto with both the team
championship and his personal
goal of overall individual winner
on opposite sides of the equa-
tion. He had just a 12.10-second
cushion individually over Austra-
lia's Daniel Sanders while Span-
ish Junior Josep Garcia wasn't
completely out of the picture,
36.09 seconds adrift of Robert.
With all three in different
classes, though, it would come
down to who put down the fastest
time in their final motocross test.
awarded to the most improved
team.
Due to the new rules reducing
the number of riders per team
and having each rider's score
count towards the team's score,
teams can no longer afford a
subpar day by any of its riders.
Sure, there will be the occasion-
al tip-over in a test or something
equally minor, but every team
will have a few of those dur-
ing six days of all-out racing so
that part often equals out. That
leaves other issues to work on
and that's how it went this year
for Team USA.
"We really put emphasis on
[maintaining] the bikes and also
everything around that goes into
the event—the transfers, the time
checks, the mechanics—be-
cause our riders are plenty fast
on the special tests," team man-
ager Antti Kallonen explained.
"When I look back on all the five
years that I've now done this
[job of managing the team], all
the mistakes that has happened
aren't really happening in the
special tests.
"Every year, we had issues
with silly things happening and
we really put emphasis this year
that those don't happen—miss-
ing a checkpoint or following the
