MX2:
Favourite Tim Gajser took the holeshot but sandspecialist Nick Kouwenberg from the Netherlands showed on lap 2 that he loves this sandy surface, passed Gajser and was never seen again. He pushed the gap to Gajser up to 8 seconds and when Gajser had to throw his goggles after 15 minutes, it was clear that the Slovenian wouldn’t be able to make up serious ground to Kouwenberg. Kouwenberg stayed mistake-free, 2nd came Gajser and Jens Getteman passed Anton Lundgren on the very last lap to clinch the final spot on the MX2-podium.
For Tim Gajser this result also meant that he was crowned the new internazionali d’italia MX2 champion!
MX1:
Antonio Cairoli didn’t come out of the gate very good, but the first three corners proofed why he is the reigning world champion: He could smell the chances, made quick moves and took the lead. Everbody expected Cairoli to disappear, but a few corners later a lanky Belgian named Ken DeDyker showed clearly that he is not willing to give the win away on his lovely sand soil. The fastest in qualifying passed Cairoli with a spectacular move. After that Cairoli several times came close but was not able to make a pass over the belgian colossus. David Philippaerts showed great speed already in the previous rounds of internazionali, this time he again kept the pace behind DeDyker and Cairoli, right in front of Jeremy van Horebeek. Another crazy thing happened in the begining when German Max Nagl and Russian Evgeny Bobryshev tangled and went down. Their bikes got together so bad that it took many people and eternity to seperate them from each other. On Nagl’s bike mechanics even had to remove the rear wheel. Of course the race was over for both. After some laps Philippaerts crashed big time, seemed to be a little bit confused but after some time he got up and got going again only to crash again two laps later. Then his race was over too. At the front everything stayed the same untill disaster happened to the leading DeDyker: On the begining of the final lap DeDyker’s bike stopped right in front of the pits. It seemed that it ran out of fuel. He immideately pushed the bike into the pits but looks like there was no fuel available, so his race come to an unhappy end. Cairoli earned the win in front of van Horebeek and Romain Febvre.
ELITE:
Jeremy van Horebeek took the lead in the begining of the final race of the day. His teammate Romain Febvre followed his rear wheel, then the factory KTM squad started to make pressure on the Rinaldi Yamaha’s: Ken DeDyker began charging from 5th place, what forced Tony Cairoli to step up his pace. The world champ made a phenomenal pass on Tommy Searle for third, two laps later he passed Febvre for second and looked on a misson. But then a mistake put him back to third and after throwing away his goggles Cairoli’s desire seemed a bit broken. Meanwhile DeDyker’s charge also ended when his bike started steaming and he slowed down drastically. Ironically two laps later he went back to normal racespeed and the bike wasn’t even steaming anymore. But 6th place was all he could safe on a difficult day for him where he was obviously the fastest man on track. Van Horebeek controlled the race till the checkered flag, surprising second place after an impressive ride for Febvre, Cairoli in third, Searle fourth and Max Nagl secured fifth.
The reigning world champion Cairoli left Ottobiano with both, the MX1 and Elite class internazionali d’Italia Championship 2015 and seems ready for the battle with a red headed American named Ryan Villopoto which will start in already two weeks time in Losail/Qatar.
Text: Peter Reitbauer
Photos: Irina Gorodniakova