Sidecarcross World Championship Results
Marcel started racing with his brother Daniël in the world championship in 1995. As a passenger, his first world championship race was the Dutch GP in Markelo on 24 September 1995, which is the only one he raced in that season. The two brothers quickly improved and the next season saw their first win, at the French GP in Baugé on 12 May 1996. From season to season they improved, culminating in a one-point win of the world championship in 1999. Marcel suffered serious injuries in a training run in February 2000, finding himself temporarily paralysed and unable to continue racing.
He made a surprising recovery within ten months and returned to the sidecarcross world championship in 2001, now as a driver, with his countryman Rene Boon as passenger. Marcel could however not archive the same success there as he had with his brother, a tenth overall finish in 2006 being his strongest season result. Three fifth place finishes in races were his best results in individual events. The 2008 season, now with his German passenger Marco Godau, was to be his last as an international rider, but he may continue to race in the Dutch championship were his showings have been much stronger over the years. He did take part in the Dutch and Swiss GP with passenger Bruno Kaelin in 2009, achieving good results.
He mainly raced in the 2009 German Championship, where he finished second overall. In 2010, Willemsen participated in three Grand Prix once more, again with Bruno Kaelin as his passenger. In 2011, he took part in twelve races, using Gertie Eggink as his passenger, who had won the world championship in the previous year as passenger of Marcel's brother. With the same passenger in 2012, Willemsen finished in eighth place in the world championship, earning his first-ever podium finish as a driver at the first race of the 2012 Belgian GP.
Read more about this topic: Marcel Willemsen
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or results:
“A completely indifferent attitude toward clothes in women seems to me to be an admission of inferiority, of perverseness, or of a lack of realization of her place in the world as a woman. Or—what is even more hopeless and pathetic—it’s an admission that she has given up, that she is beaten, and refuses longer to stand up to the world.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“The peace conference must not adjourn without the establishment of some ordered system of international government, backed by power enough to give authority to its decrees. ... Unless a league something like this results at our peace conference, we shall merely drop back into armed hostility and international anarchy. The war will have been fought in vain ...”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)