Great Debut for Team Hancock Haj

250cc World Championships

31 August 2017

Team Hancock Haj made its debut in the 250cc FIM World Championships this week in Prague, with Polish youngster Wiktor Lampart securing 6^th place in the world.

Wiktor qualified for the final from Semi Final Two on Tuesday, as did American racer Colton Hicks, while Sebastian Palmese took the first reserve spot.

It was a strong field with the world’s best 250cc riders battling for the title, but Wiktor was right up there and actually qualified for the Grand Final, only for the weather to interrupt and force the meeting to be called off before it could be run.

Wiktor worked so hard to get through after making a last-bend charge in his Semi to seal second place, meaning he was due to line up in the Final with Jonas Knudsen, Karol Zupinski and Phillip Hellstrom-Bangs.

The heavy rain put paid to that and, as they had to go back to the scores after 20 heats, Knudsen was crowned the winner with Zupinski second and Hellstrom-Bangs in third.

Colton Hicks had a tough start but got better with each lap and ended on three points, and the experience he gained will stand him in great stead moving forwards.

It was a great week for the team and a huge learning experience, and Greg Hancock is stoked with how it went.

He said:

It’s been an awesome experience for all of us, we came into the week knowing that we were going to be learning on the job and we have learned so much.

The three riders were brilliant, they put everything into it and soaked it all up, and to have all three of them in the top 17 in the world is amazing – they should be so proud of themselves. This is a tough meeting and the standard is so good, so Wiktor, Colton and Sebastian did a great job and the main thing is that it’s more experience in the bank for them.

We have some big plans and we can take forward what we’ve learned this year, and we know more for next year and we’ll be even better. We are very lucky to have some awesome people on board with us and I want to say a huge thank you to Lele from GM Engines and to Marce Gerhard too – they have helped us this week and we can’t thank them enough for what they have done.

I also want to say thanks to my mechanics, Raf, Bodzio and Oskar because they worked so hard. We had a lot of issues and a lot of challenges but they solved every problem and worked all week to make sure our guys could compete so we owe them big time.

We’re excited to come back again next year and try to be even better!