Bud Racing Kawasaki’s Maxime Desprey emerged from the dusty, slick hard-pack of Uddevalla to clasp his third victory from six races of the EMX250 European Championship – the feeder class into the highest level of motocross – in the latest furious outing for ‘MXGP’. Round eleven of eighteen meant that the 2015 FIM World Championship bounded north and close to the city of Gothenburg for the Grand Prix of Sweden: an event embedded in the FIM series as the rocks that surround the scenic but frustrating facility. That same hillside was full of 22,000 sunburnt fans but the Scandinavian fixture was eventful and unprofitable for the Monster Energy GP arm with only MX2 World Champion Jordi Tixier taking a consolatory third position in the second moto.
Uddevalla almost forged its very own Swedish ‘sauna’ as the temperatures crept up over the weekend. The narrow and hard-pack terrain was tricky for overtaking, was dusty and could have benefitted from watering in the build-up to the Grand Prix with many riders nonplussed by the lack of grip and racing lines and the belated (and ill-advised) hosing of the hardened soil meant the surface was treacherous at the beginning of the motos.
Desprey walked away with another win in the nine round European contest thanks to a 1-2 score and in a series where the top four riders are striving to get a grip on the standings. The talented Frenchman is now just two points behind Nick Kouwenberg with three fixtures left in the competition.
In MX2 Tixier was happy to have inked a two year deal with the Monster Energy Kawasaki Racing Team that will see the defending MX2 World Champion make his MXGP class debut in 2016 on factory equipment but he was luckless in the first moto when a broken exhaust silencer ended his race with only a few laps to the chequered flag. The world champ fired back in the second outing and hassled Jeremy Seewer for second place for large stages of the sprint before having to accept third place. Monster Energy Kawasaki team-mate Thomas Covington tried his best to sixteenth but could not find a good feeling on the dirt and also crashed in both sorties. Monster Energy DRT Kawasaki’s Max Anstie managed a best of seventh place in the second MX2 tussle.
In MXGP Tyla Rattray battled to eleventh overall in his first appearance since the South African announced his intention to retire from the sport at the end of the season in Germany two weeks ago.
MXGP heads unstoppably onwards and shifts further east through the continent to Kegums, just outside the capital city of Riga for the Grand Prix of Latvia next weekend.