Well unfortunately this years Erzberg finished for me at the end of the infamous Carl's diner. I got a pretty rubbish start after I got a bit of water on the air filiter and the bike bogged just after rounding the first turn. The track then turned to blinding dust and another rider clipped my bars and I went down. I was in about twentieth position with no goggles coming out of the quarry and started working my way towards the front. Dropping down the new mega steep rock section into Carls Diner I passed Curt Caselli, Ben Hemmingway and Cory Graffunder picking up fifth place!

I was feeling really good and started to work my way through the massive boulders of Carls diner. In the past we have picked our way down the side of this section missing the worst of the boulders, this year the organizers taped us down through the worst of it so we had about a kilometer of car sized rocks  to deal with. It was all going pretty well and I was pulling time on the guys when right near the end of the section the back wheel slipped on a rock and a gnarly dagger shaped rock smashed my clutch cover guard and pierced the clutch cover. Oil spewed out the side of the engine and pieces of the cover ran around inside the engine. I chucked the bike on it's side to save the last of the precious oil and ran across the boulders back to the start of the section. Unfortunately the team guys had already left leaving the chance of getting a new cover pretty small. I shouted around the spectators to try and get some help but nobody seemed too interested in helping me at all, so basically I was done...

I spent the next three hours running back and forth along Carl's diner getting as many of my KTM team mates through as possible and using the exercise to vent my frustration at not finishing.

Pretty disappointing but bring on Romaniacs with the new improved clutch guard!