Jeffrey Herlings spoke to a local radio station in The Netherlands and gave his few on the situation as he enters his home Grand Prix this weekend. With a third place overall and losing 10 points on the World championship leader Tim Gajser, and nearly maximum points from a Sunday at the GPs, he knows time is running out. Of course, nerves will start to play a major role in the three top riders’ performances, and anything can happen in the last five rounds and probably will.

“I have lost I think 10 points this weekend and I am now 48 points behind with five rounds remaining, I need to win everything, or have some luck somewhere. I think this weekend I have lost the title; I mean I haven’t lost it completely. I don’t have a good feeling about it, but you can’t change what happened. I was 38 points behind when I came to Sweden and all the bad luck I have had this year, two times a crash in the start, a mechanical issue when I was sitting in second place, where I lost 22 points. I don’t know what I have done to somebody, but I am standing here, fit and going home and I finished third. The season is not over, and anything can happen. I have to be realistic; it doesn’t look great at this moment.”

“This wasn’t an easy one. I had nowhere to go at the start on Saturday and this is definitely not the easiest of tracks for passing. I got back some points. I had work to do in the first moto after being pushed out: this did not help. A good start finally arrived in the second moto. I was behind Jorge [Prado] and I kept the distance but then had a pretty big one on the last lap. I still managed to finish on the podium and we have ten in a row now so I hope to keep the streak going. Next up is Arnhem. I hope my hand will be OK and it doesn’t feel too bad. The home GP always gives you the extra little boost usually and I hope I can use that to my advantage.”

A big crash on the final lap of the Swedish GP could have ended badly, although battered and bruised, Herlings came through with just some ice on his hand and hopefully, he recovers well enough to be 100% in Arnhem next weekend.

“I think I'm okay on the last lap, just a tabletop before the waves, I came out of the turn, there was a lot of big kickers in there and I was with my hand between the handlebars, so it's quite swollen out. But race-wise it was OK; I had a lot of bad luck with Calvin (Vlaanderen) crashing in the RAM Qualifying heat right in front of me and nowhere to go. First race had a really good start and got pushed out of the track and again I lost many positions so definitely the luck wasn't on my side. But the second race, the speed was good, and I come out with another podium but for the championship it was not the best”

Now, back to the sand, even deeper sand than in Lommel two weeks ago, Herlings will try and get back those 10 points he lost to Gajser in Sweden and then battle the Spaniard, Jorge Prado for as many points as possible. It isn’t over just yet and we all know, you cannot count out “The Bullet”.

Ray Archer image