Kirssi said before the start: "Walldorf is going to be a tough piece of work. The course is over 8 km long and loaded with difficulties. There are narrow, winding steep inclines in the forest and a rock-hard motocross track with lots of long-distance jumps".
Nevertheless the young Fin confidently got to work over the next two hours. Starting from 15. position he flipped the switch to "full throttle". With more than 100 hp and approx. 70 kg more battle weight compared to the competition on their single cylinders, this really is saying something. Kirssi raced with the leading pack right from the start and won the hearts of the approx. 3000 spectators thanks to his unspectacular yet supremely controlled riding style. "Above all in the uphill forest section where the narrow ruts make riding difficult, the chassis and above all the beefy engine of the HP2 really moved me up to the front." The likeable Fin always came out of the difficult sections back into the open with top-notch times.
"On the motocross sections things then really started to heat up. The many jumps, some up to 15 meters far, call for full concentration but the well-tuned suspension and above all the Conti damping system always gave me the feeling of being in control."
From lap 4, Kirssi was always racing near position 10. His lap times remained in a window of only 6 seconds until approx. 10 minutes before the end of the race. You could set your watch by the constant times of the HP2 as it came past the start and finish.
Only in the second-to-last lap a defect of the rear wheel suspension brought the Fin to a standstill. HP2 development head Markus Theobald: "Simo is always instructed to carefully observe the riding behaviour of the HP2 during the race. If he notices anything he is to come into the pits so we can analyse the fault right away. And that´s just what he did. The exact cause of the fault still has to be deduced.
The Cross Country Championship gives us the ideal conditions for conducting these extreme tests. We´re very pleased and are confident that the HP2 will shake things up again at the 24-hour race on 14./15. May."
For further information and to view the results lists, please go to: www.german-cross-country.de.
