Thursday, February 11, 2016

4 Done in Qatar

The longest and potentially most difficult/exciting stage in Qatar is complete. The stage was not quite as exciting as predicted, but in the end there were still some fireworks. The winds on the local circuits blew the field apart and we missed everything due to poor planning/preparation, so our day was done. Prior to that, we had a decent showing though. Brad, Karl, and I were active in trying to get into the allusive early break. I thought I had made it, but it wasn't so. Then Daniel showed us all up by trying once and getting in! That break got reabsorbed about halfway through the race when the first crosswind split happened. The crosswind chaos lasted for about 20km and then everything came back together as we came to the local circuits. The race hit the reset button, a new break went away, which I briefly considered trying to jump across to until the wind convinced me otherwise, and then we just tried to keep Marco in a good place for the inevitable final split. Besides missing the finishing split, we also had 6 flats today; hard day at the office for the mechanics!

Tomorrow is our last chance. The winds are forecasted to be very strong as a cross/head wind, so there is going to be some excitement. Hopefully we can make it to the circuit with Marco or Carlos, who will be our best chance in the sprint. We'll see what happens!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for ther update. Good luck--and in Oman too!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.