Mathieu van der Poel again came up short against Wout van Aert when he had to settle for second at the Zilvermeercross in Mol.

"In the beginning it was pretty good. Then I got worse," Mathieu van der Poel told Het Nieuwsblad. "I did ​​two or three bad laps. Nothing worked there. In the end I felt good again and I could still take second place.

"I crashed during the warm-up. I crashed pretty hard on the asphalt but without much damage, a stupid mistake. I did not suffer from that during the race. Hopefully that's also the case tomorrow in Francorchamps.

"Today was slightly less good in terms of my form. Tomorrow should be better because the course is a lot more difficult than today. In Francorchamps, you cannot recover at all."