Sectors 1 & 2

Just like Mont Sainte Anne, Danny Hart started fast and stayed there, going fastest at Sector 1 by just over a tenth of a second. There were a few surprising contenders at the first split thought. Eddie Masters was in second place, Bernard Kerr third and Alexandre Fayolle in sixth place. To balance out these surprises, Mr Consistency himself Greg Minnaar was sitting in fourth place less than a second back. Well in touch at this early stage.

Further down the top 20, Harry Heath may have been in his final World Cup before retirement but he showed he still has world class place with the 14th fastest time at split 1.

In to sector 2 and Hart just carried on in the same way that he dominated the field in Mont Sainte Anne, going fastest again and most importantly putting some serious time into all of his rivals. Although the positions from 2 to 20 were covered by about 1.4 seconds, Hart pulled out nearly a second over second placed Minnaar to go 1.8 seconds up overall at split 2. Eddie Masters was still on a great run at split 2. He went 14th fastest on the sector but didn’t lose too much time to his rivals and held on to 3rd place.

Sectors 3 & 4

By sector 3 Danny Hart had surpassed his domination of the previous race in Mont Sainte Anne. There he went fastest on two of the five sectors. Here he was fastest on all of the first three! We were into the steep wooded sections by now and this seemed to really jumble up the field for individual sector times. Adam Brayton was running at around 16th place until going 2nd fastest in sector 3 pushed him in to touching distance of the top 10 overall. David Trummer went third fastest despite only taking 39th and 26th on the first two sectors.

In contrast, Greg Minnaar and Loic Bruni both gave up another 1.4 seconds to Hart in this sector, putting Danny a full 3.2 seconds up at split 3.

Although it was only about 25 seconds long, the weirdness continued into Sector 4 with some high profile crashes and movement in the overall. Loris Vergier, who’d had a pretty poor run by his now high standards, still managed to put in a blistering sector to take some consolation from an eventual 25th place at the finish. Amaury Pierron showed what might have been after suffering in the top sectors due to the rain that hampered the top qualifiers (Pierron qualified 4th) but still showing his raw speed in the lower woods where the rain hadn’t quite made it’s mark.

In the overall at split 4, Hart maintained his lead – only giving up 0.2 seconds to Vergier and keeping over 3 seconds between him and Greg Minnaar. This was also where Alexandre Fayolle made up the places that gave him a first ever World Cup podium. Eddie Masters crashed out of contention here and Connor Fearon could only go 19th fastest, meaning Fayolle jumped up to fourth place.

Sector 5

Into the final run in, and Danny Hart wasn’t going to give it up from here. He actually gave up almost a second to Loic Bruni but he had such a buffer by this point that it didn’t matter. Almost Gwinesque domination!

Another marker of what might have been was Troy Brosnan taking the fastest sector – another of the top qualifiers hobbled by rain at the top of the course but still able to put in some decent speed at the bottom.

Another marker for the future – Charlie Harrison from the USA had a great 11th place qualifier and finished 14th overall. He took 9th in sector 5 – faster than the winner Hart! One to watch for next season for sure…