2022 Italian Enduro Championship: Verona and Macdonald share opening round wins

Results from the opening major race of the calendar in Europe, rounds one and two of the 2022 Italian Enduro Championship in Arma di Taggia where Andrea Verona took a maiden overall win ahead of Hamish Macdonald.

Italy’s national enduro series welcomed an elite list of international riders to their first major race of the season at round one of the Absolutes of Italy, Assoluti d’Italia di Enduro, in Arma di Taggia at the weekend.

A long list of EnduroGP riders were putting their winter training to the first tests of the year in the rocky hills and down on the beach with two days racing close to the French border and San Remo.

2022 Assoluti d’Italia di Enduro Rnd 1 & 2 in a nutshell:

GASGAS Factory Racing’s Andrea Verona made a statement in front of an illustrious entry list with an opening day’s performance 46 seconds faster overall across the nine tests.
The weekend actually started on Friday evening with a beach test prologue in the dark where former beach racing champion and Le Touquet race winner Nathan Watson set the best time on the RedMoto Honda 450. Check out how nuts that was onboard with Hamish Macdonald.
Saturday saw Verona stamp his authority with three Extreme test and two Enduro test wins to seal that convincing overall. This was the double E1 world champion’s first Assoluti overall victory.
The second day saw Macdonald turn the tables – a maiden Assoluti day win for the Sherco rider – who took advantage of Verona’s early mistake in the Extreme test to record a 14 second winning margin.
Watson was the rider to watch in the sandy Cross tests all weekend with three fastest times on both days on his way to third overall for the weekend.
Samuele Bernardini, Davide Soreca and Hamish Macdonald were the only other riders to take test wins across the two days.
Soreca, Matteo Cavallo and Theo Espinasse were all impressive fighting for the top five places. Soreca stole the third place overall on day one but dropped to P8 on Sunday while Cavallo took a 5-5 scorecard for fourth overall. Soreca did enough for fifth while Espinasse went 6-4 for sixth overall on his Oxmoto Beta debut.
Reigning Assoluti champion Wil Ruprecht went 7-6 over the weekend bettering his compatriot Daniel Milner, making his debut for Fantic and after a year off due to Covid restrictions in Australia, finishing 13-12 over the two days.
Class victories also went to Deny Philippaerts ripping the 125 TM , Davide Guarneri and Wil Ruprecht in the 300 2T, Verona 250 4T, Alex Salvini 450 4T, Kevin Cristino Youth and Lorenzo Macoritto in the Juniors.