Buildbase Honda's Thomas Ramette ends Arenacross tour in victorious style

Buildbase Honda's Thomas Ramette dominated the final round of the Garmin Arenacross Tour on Saturday evening, taking a flag-to-flag victory in the Main Event at London’s Wembley Arena.

After gelling quickly with the Wembley track, the French rider also took impressive victories in both his earlier heat races on his Honda CRF450R in only his second appearance in the Arenacross series.

In the first heat race, Ramette was followed across the line by Buildbase Honda team-mate Angelo Pellegrini, from Italy, who finished in third place and Luke Arbon, riding for the Dave Thorpe Off-Road Centre, who was fifth.

All three Honda riders lined up for the second heat race, with Pellegrini finishing second behind another race win from Ramette. Arbon recovered well from a first-corner crash to cross the line in fifth place once again.

While Ramette continued his domination of the evening in Wembley’s Main Event, Pellegrini was fifth but, following a bad start, Arbon could finished no higher than 10th.

The Buildbase Honda team ended the series in fifth place overall, just one spot behind Honda-mounted colleagues from the Dave Thorpe Off-Road Centre. The squad will now focus on the opening round of the Maxxis British Motocross Championship which kicks off at Landrake in Cornwall on 16 March.

Thomas Ramette: "It was a great night for me as I won both my heat races and the Main Event so it was perfect for me. The track was really slippery and you had to ride smooth, so I'm really happy to finish the season with a win."

Angelo Pellegrini: "I'm not completely happy because I wanted to finish the season on the podium again like the last round. The track and the event was really good this evening and I hope to be able to come back in the future."

Luke Arbon: "Today was a little bit of a let-down as I felt really good on the bike and qualified with a good lap time. I just suffered a little bit with the outside gate picks and struggled with my starts. The track was really slippery tonight, but I can't thank Dave and the team enough for everything that they have done."

Dave Thorpe: "Tonight has been very good for the team and Thomas has fulfilled the potential that he showed at Sheffield where everything was a little bit rush and that effected his results. This week Thomas came over on the Wednesday and stayed with the team; we went riding before tonight to get the bike set up well. He is a quality rider in Arenacross and was much more settled and I'm pleased for him as he worked hard this week and is a great guy to work with. Angelo has been great for us in this series. His biggest downside is his starts and if he could have got them sorted then he would have been on the podium a few more times. Luke is also a great rider and has done so well on the smaller CRF250F machine. Both Luke and his girlfriend Sam have been great to have around the team and the whole experience has been great for everyone.”


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