Tim Gajser is first time MXGP champion, Jeffrey Herlings regains MX2 title

2023 Author: Nicholas Abramson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-09-01 00:14

The Slovenian pilot Tim gajser has been made mathematically with the title of MXGP, the highest category of world motocross. In his rookie year, the 2015 MX2 champion has surprised Italian Antonio Cairoli and reigning champion Romain Febvre of France to return the queen class title to Sling 22 years after the conquered by the Swede Marcus Hansson in 1994.

Where there has been no surprise has been in MX2, where the title went to the great dominator, the Dutch Jeffrey herlings. In this way, Jeff achieves his third title in the category after those harvested in 2012 and 2013. After losing another two titles due to injury in the two previous seasons, Herlings has been proclaimed champion with three margin races, which would have been more if he would not have missed six sleeves due to injury.

Tim Gajser is serious

When last year he took advantage of Herlings' injury to win the MX2 title, no one expected that in 2016 the Slovenian Tim Gajser would be celebrating the MXGP championship. Even when he started the season with a double in Qatar, everyone was pointing to the French as big favorites. Romain Febvre and the Italian myth Antonio Cairoli, without forgetting German Max nagl.

Febvre, 2015 champion also as a rookie, replicated the double in the second round of Thailand, challenging Gajser to a heads-up in which Cairoli would begin to interfere with a double in the seventh round of the season in Germany, finishing with a second position streak and showing that the injury that cut his streak of six consecutive titles (2009-2014) was already history.

Far from crumpling in the face of opposition from the transalpine, Gajser propped up his title with a streak of seven victories and a second place in eight races, and the absence of Febvre in two appointments due to injury served him the outcome on a platter. Not without final ups and downs, and after letting the first match point escape in Assen, it was enough for him to be fourth and second in the races of Charlotte, where the local guest Eli Tomac took the double, to mathematically certify his second world title, the first in MXGP.

Jeff Herlings, to MXGP as three-time champion

Forced by the change in regulations, the Dutch Jeffrey Herlings to move up to MXGP in 2017, but he will do so by making up for the fiascos of the last two seasons by taking his third MX2 World Cup. One more year, he has had no rival, and only an untimely injury planted a slight question, which he has been in charge of clearing for return the title to KTM.

Herlings started the season with 14 wins in a row, and after a second place in the opening sleeve of Italy, he linked another 9 to sign a masterful 23/24. After such a streak, the injury came: six races of absence than the most regular of his pursuers, the Helvetian Jeremy seewer, took the opportunity to approach the general. But this time Jeff returned in time to sentence the World Cup.

He returned with a second place before being reunited with the victory in the second race of Assen, where he initialed a duel for history with the Spanish Jorge Prado. In Charlotte, after winning the first heat he was second in the second, only behind the local guest Cooper webb, brand new WMA 250cc West Coast champion for the second year in a row.

Iker Larrañaga, best Spanish in Charlotte

The only Spanish representative in MXGP, Jose Butron, left Charlotte with just five points, obtained thanks to the 16th position in the second heat. A booty that places him 17th in the absence of the last test in Glen Helen, in which he aspires to get into the top 15 of the final classification.

In MX2, Spain once again had two representatives: Iker Larrañaga had a good weekend, being 14th in both races, while Jorge Prado He could not endorse his good performance in free practice, and came out with just six points, being 17th and 19th. In the general, Larrañaga is 17th, the absent Jorge Zaragoza 20th, Prado occupies 36th place and Francesc Mataró is 71st.