Till Belczykowski’s rough patch on the MV Agusta was long and fraught with difficulties. The new season opener in the IDM Supersport turned everything around for the 20-year-old from Duisburg. What happened?
Looking back. Till Belczykowski Supersport two years as the sole rider on an MV Agusta F3 800 RR in the IDM Supersport series. Every single championship point was hard-fought, not least due to a lack of comparable data from the competition. “Last year, he was sometimes just glad to have brought the bike home in one piece,” recalls his father Jörg today, thinking back to his disheartened son, and adds, “Till could do whatever he wanted, but after six laps, his tire would be shot.”
There’s no trace of that now. After extensive testing in the winter, numerous suspension adjustments, and a new steering linkage, Belczykowski has that grin back on his face. So much so that even Dirk Geiger (Honda) and Lennox Lehmann (Yamaha) have been taking notice for quite some time. At the IDM season opener at the Motorsport Arena Oschersleben, Belczykowski delivered the first results that really count.
He dominated the first qualifying session with gusto. Even though he “only” managed to secure 5th place on the grid in the end, Belczykowski was over the moon: 1.3 seconds faster than last year and just 0.6 seconds behind the pole position—that was a real milestone for him! The fact that he had to settle for less in the second qualifying session and dropped back to P8 was something he could live with.
By the end of the weekend, the North Rhine-Westphalia native from LJ Racing had made it back into the top ten in his first race after a year and a half away from competition. On top of that, he realized that he was over a second per lap faster over the entire race distance than he had been the previous year. Mark your calendars: The Schleizer Dreieck is coming up in two weeks, and Belczykowski isn’t done pushing forward just yet.
