Rev Racing Honda’s Anthony Reville and Brad Todd endured a challenging outing during yesterday’s British MX2 and MXY2 Championship races at Canada Heights, Kent. After two tough races Reville was lucky to escape injury after a heavy fall in the final race of the day, and Todd was settling into the youth class, despite some technical issues, for his 250cc national debut to take a 23rd position in the second moto.

After recovering from an injury to his heart and lung sustained at FatCat Motoparc two weeks ago, Reville was keen to make amends at this weekend’s round two of the MX2 Championship, but lady luck was certainly not on his side. Reville got a good jump off the gate in race one but tangled with Nathan Watson and went down. The 18-year-old Lincolnshire-man came from 29th place at the end of lap one back to 16th place by the chequered flag with a strong ride that wasn’t reflected in the final result.

In the second moto Reville again got a good jump off the start, but struggled into the first turn. He was 33rd after lap one and made storming progress to 13th by lap five of the 20-minute plus two-lap moto. The Honda pilot slipped back a place to conclude the race in 14th position; again a result not reflecting his performance.

In what was already proving to be a tough day, which wasn’t returning the results the team had hoped for, Reville didn’t get the best of starts to the final race and crashed heavily after getting cross-rutted on the take off when he hit a kicker on one of the jumps on lap four, which had already caught out some of the leading riders earlier in the day. Reville landed sideways and went down hard, causing the race to be red-flagged with a suspected broken pelvis and possible internal damage. The young Honda pilot was rushed to hospital but released later; thankfully just very badly bruised and will continue his recuperation at home.

Brad Todd, who made his national CRF 250R debut this weekend, was getting to grips with riding in the bigger ranks. After finishing runner-up in the BYMX big wheel series last year, the youngster was looking to find his feet in racing the higher capacity machine. Todd had a small technical issue in qualifying, which thwarted his progress and the problem returned unexpectedly before even starting race one, so he was unfortunately forced to retire. In the second moto 15-year-old Todd struggled after crashing off the start, but recovered to 23rd position, despite riding his spare bike, and is looking forward to making further progress throughout the year.

The Rev Racing Honda team would like to thank trackside medics for their assistance with Anthony and the squad will now go back to base to work on improving preparations for the next round of the British Championships.

Anthony Reville: #356

“Wow, could my luck get any worse! The training programme is there, the bike is really good, and we are working hard but we’re not getting the results that we are looking for. It’s mainly the starts; I’m getting the jump but then losing out down the straight, so it’s something we need to look at because I’m getting swallowed up on the first lap. I came through really good in the first two races from right at the back by finding some good lines, but it’s not enough to get the results we want, and I need to start higher to go forwards. Then in the final race on the fourth lap I went down big. I didn’t get the take off quite right as I hit a kicker, and went down really hard. The track was catching out quite a lot of people yesterday and fortunately it didn’t turn out as serious as we first thought for me. I couldn’t straighten my leg at first and was in a lot of pain, but thankfully after a lot of tests there’s nothing broken. I’m really, really sore but hopefully with a few days rest I’ll heal up. I’d like to thank everyone who is working hard to support me, the medics for thei attention trackside, and everyone’s best wishes. We’ll keep working to get things going our way soon.”

Brad Todd: #714

“Coming into this round was going to be a big challenge, as it’s my first national race on the Honda CRF 250R, so I knew it wasn’t going to be very easy. In qualifying I suffered a small technical issue, which caused me to have difficulties, but I still managed 18th on the gate. When I was preparing for race one, a technical issue had arisen again, leaving us with no time to fix the bike or prepare the spare bike, so I unfortunately missed the first race. I was keen to get out and race hard in the second race, but there was to be more bad luck for me, as I became tangled up in the first corner, knocking my confidence a bit, and being on the spare bike I wasn’t completely comfortable. I still pushed hard and managed to make up some places to finish 23rd, but I’m hoping to have better luck next time and improve on my results.”

Mark Reville: Rev Racing Honda Team Manager

“Putting the setbacks aside, I still feel there were signs of promise for the team yesterday. Ant had good lap times, and pushed through the pack very well. We are going to work on Ant’s starts, which are a problem at the minute, and because of his tall stature it’s a more difficult task than with the lighter riders. The bikes are very good, and are showing good speed in the races, but we need to work on finding a solution to help him off the startline. This first meeting was a huge learning curve for Brad, and it wasn’t ideal for him after the small technical problems, as he had to race the spare bike and then he got tangled up on the start, which meant he didn’t show his full potential. We’re going to have further training and testing with Brad this week to get him more comfortable with the bike, and help him improve his results.”

www.revracing.co.uk - Image credit Ade Threasher