Visiting the ‘Lebenshilfewerk Hohenstein-Ernstthal’ – a day that both sides will remember for a long time.
It was probably the most stressful week in the run-up to the upcoming 2022 season: in mid-January, the CFMOTO Racing PruestelGP team came together at the Sachsenring for the extensive preparations for the team presentation ’22. While the mechanics team had their hands full of work to attach this years’s design to the CFMOTO machines , at the same time the media team was working under high pressure on finalising video and photo settings for first impressions of the new CFMOTO Racing PruestelGP line-up.
And although the riders Xavier Artigas and Carlos Tatay themselves had only started their travel from Spain that day, landed in Dresden via a stopover in Frankfurt/Main and finally reached their final destination at the Sachsenring around noon, there were several items on the agenda for them too after a short breather.
The first stop: the ‘Lebenshilfewerk’ Hohenstein-Ernstthal in the immediate vicinity of the team base. In the various workshop rooms of the facility, people who cannot (yet) be employed on the general labour market due to their disability find opportunities for vocational training or can work directly on site.
When Xavier, Carlos and their team arrived, there was surprise at first, but this quickly turned into positive excitement: the riders of the home team of CFMOTO Racing PruestelGP have arrived!
Despite the long journey from the Iberian peninsula, the riders took the time to be shown around the different workshop areas where a wide variety of products made of wood and metal are manufactured and assembled.
A small highlight in the truest sense of the word was a decorative lamp in the shape of the Sachsenring. With the clever use of tyres that have already been on the asphalt of the adjacent circuit, these are given a second life and, in combination with the illuminated wooden element, have real collector’s item character for motor sports fans. Of course, Xavier and Carlos didn’t miss the opportunity to sign one or the other piece on site, and since you should never appear empty-handed as a good guest, they and the team’s sports director, former GP rider and World Champion (2005, 125cc) Tom Lüthi, had packets of signed shirts and stickers in their luggage, which they later distributed to all the racing fans in the workshop. The two guys from CFMOTO were open for direct talks and one or two proud fan photos were taken together with the riders on this day.
In the attention-grabbing field of motorbike racing, it takes more than just being able to deliver the best performances on the dot. Of course, for the fans and the riders themselves, the sporting performance is often the top priority – because it is the prerequisite for everything that follows. For us as a team as a whole, it is of course important to use this certain degree of awareness in the best possible way and to express our respect for the great work of the organisation, as we did here with the visit to the workshop for the disabled. Thank you very much for these impressions!
