After his weekend of domination at Loket on the hard-pack, MXGP championship leader, Jeffrey Herlings, spoke about how good the Honda feels on conditions that were traditionally not his strong point!
The HRC Honda man said: “This bike really, it’s just, like I’ve been mentioning, it just sticks onto the ground, and the track is really slippery, there’s not many lines, but it’s still technical. You can pass actually quite good, I think, because that was actually good when you have tracks that you can really go left, right, and make changes. So, actually, the track prep was actually quite good, I think.
“But, yeah, the bike just sticks to the ground, and I can just really do what I want to do with it, and like I said, the KTM was a great bike once again., don’t get me wrong, but these tracks, riding the Honda is something pretty incredible, and yeah, for me, it was a better bike on this surface.”
Heading into the Lommel, Herlings feels he has a better set-up than at the start of the season: “We’re in a very good spot. I feel really good. I’m physically fit. The starts go better. We have a great set-up. The set-up, compared to the beginning of the year in the sand, to now, we have definitely improved, because in the beginning, we were still fighting for the right set-up, but doing the Dutch races with great competition with riders such as Romain, we had a chance to try things, and I think in the sand now, I can also try to fight for the victory.”
“Obviously, in all the other sand races, I was more or less second best after Lucas, but I had nothing for him. So I don’t know if he’s going to be back next weekend, but if so, I don’t expect him to be as good and as fit as he was in the beginning of the year with his injuries. So I definitely think we have a chance to also win in the sand.
Herlings is looking more and more the dominant rider he used to be with every win on the Honda as his confidence in the machine keeps rising. The question is can anyone else not named Lucas Coenen match his pace for the rest of the year?
