Lorenz Stäuble
 

InHungary the Super Twin favourites can take a first step towards a new championship. But who are the favourites for Hungary and the 2011 UEM crown? Last year Lorenz Stäuble, Job Heezen and Hans Olav Olstad had a season-long battle, the Swiss Team Erbacher rider taking the title at the very last race. This year, with at least four more title candidates and one new kid capable of causing an upset, the battle for the UEM Super Twin Championship promises to be even more intense.

Job Heezen

First of all, Kunmadaras won’t have the same winner as last year. Job Heezen took maximum points in 2010 but can’t make it to Hungary this time. “I also have to run my business and can’t be away for so many weeks a year. My employees have their holidays too and my crew can’t take so many days off from work. So I have to skip Kunmadaras and Alastaro and that makes it very difficult to go for the title. The teams showing up at all seven races have the best chances,” says the number three from 2010. But if Heezen is consistent in the remaining five races and others run into problems, the Dutchman could still be in the championship battle at the European Finals.

Hans Olav Olstad
 

Lorenz Stäuble, Hans Olav Olstad and Trond-Jostein Höiberget, the other three top-four finishers in the 2010 championship, will all travel to Kunmadaras. Stäuble will start his title defence in Hungary with a new crankshaft bought from the Zodiac team and is the favourite again for 2011. Olstad, runner-up last year in Hungary, will also contest all the races and, with the speed he already showed last year, the Norwegian can certainly go for his first UEM title this season. Höiberget, last year’s number four, may not have the fastest bike but, with seven races to run, consistency might be even more important. The racer Stäuble and Olstad fear most might be Per Bengtsson. The 2009 champion ran a limited schedule last year but will do the full tour this season and wants to bring the championship crown back to Sweden.

Team Stäuble - 2010 champions

Roel Koedam showed the potential of the blown Godfather VII Zodiac machine last year but was not consistent enough. But it won’t take long to find out if the Dutchman is an outsider or a favourite.


Roel Koedam

“Owing to other commitments we’ll have to miss the Tierp race, so that makes it difficult to go for the championship,” says Vincent Pels, continuing: “We hope to have solved last year’s heat problems in the cylinder head and we also have a new timer box, so if all the parts do what they are supposed to, we can run great numbers as we proved last year. In that case we might still be able to go for the championship. We fired the bike up last weekend and it sounds totally different with its new exhaust system. The next two weeks we’ll be working on our second engine and hope to have a third one in spare parts too. Because there is no time left for testing, Hungary is our first race. After Kunmadaras we’ll know where we are.”

Samu Kemppainen can take a big step forward this season. Last year’s number eight bought a potentially winning bike from Canada and Heezen and Pels both think the Finn might be an outsider for the title. Pels: “Samu will get help from Canada and it depends on the time they need to find the right set-up for the bike. If it doesn’t take too long they might surprise, but track conditions will probably be their biggest challenge.” The same can be said about the newest kid on the Super Twin block, Christian Jäger. The young German showed his riding skills on the Black Seven Funny Bike. In the former Günther Sohn Super Twin, the team has bought a proven winner. Sohn will help the team to find the right set-up and, if Jäger can get familiar with the completely different character of the Super Twin in time, he could be one of the frontrunners. The team will test their new bike at Santa Pod’s Easter Thunderball and start their European tour one week later in Hungary.

Svein-Olav Rolfstad

Svein-Olav Rolfstad and teammate Jan Sturla Hegre will be at Kunmadaras too. The former European champion suffered many problems last year while the young Hegre showed his riding skills and could be a winner for the future. If the two Norwegians can improve their performance and reliability over the winter, they could step into contention. The same might be said about Ismo Mäenpää, the number five in the 2010 championship, who had a great first part of the 2010 season but did not score many points in the second half. The Finn is not on the entry list for Hungary so far. Roman Sixta and Petri Mattson will be at Kunmadaras and could always spring a surprise. Not entered in Hungary but showing up later this season is Martijn de Haas, the unexpected winner of the European Finals. Joackim Riemer ran a very limited schedule over the last two seasons but will enter more races this year. The always-spectacular Jaska Salakari will also start his season later in the year. The Finn’s bike is a potential winner but had too many mechanical problems in 2010.

de Haas won the last event 2010

So far, all is speculation. Come Sunday 1^st May, we’ll know more.