IT’S THE RETURN TO SAND RIDING AT LOMMEL FOR THE MXGP OF FLANDERS.
It’s time to get the paddle tyres ready for the FIM Motocross World Championship riders as round 14 of the series takes us to the deep sand of the Stedelijk Motorcrossterrein Lommel venue in the north-eastern corner of Belgium for the MXGP of Flanders this weekend!
While it is of course the home Grand Prix for the many Belgian riders that will take part, its close proximity to the Dutch border will bring many fans from The Netherlands to cheer on their heroes, and numerous riders from all nationalities have taken up residence in the area, with many of the top teams making it their base of operations for the GP season.
Belgium is famously home to more World Motocross Champions and Grand Prix winners than any other country, and more MXGP events have been held at Lommel than any other Belgian venue apart from the legendary Namur. This will be the 11th consecutive year that MXGP has visited the circuit, and the 22nd event held here in total. The first was back in 1990, a 250cc GP that was won by the determined Finn Pekka Vehkonen. The circuit has also hosted two memorable MXoN events, the Trophee des Nations in 1981, which was the landmark event that saw the first ever win for the USA in Nations competitions, then the first ever win for Germany in an incredible 2012 Monster Energy FIM MXoN contest!
The current MXGP field has 6 previous Lommel GP winners entered for the event, including four of the top six of all-time! It is current World Champion, Red Bull GASGAS Factory Racing’s Jorge Prado, who currently holds the record of four GP wins around the famous sands, although his two major rivals for honours this season, Team HRC’s Tim Gajser and Red Bull KTM Factory Racing main man Jeffrey Herlings, are close behind with three victories each. Herlings has won more individual races than anybody else at Lommel, with eight compared to Prado’s seven and Gajser’s five. The “big three” will continue their epic battle for the MXGP World Championship after a stunning weekend of racing at Loket!
MX2 will see the two Nestaan Husqvarna Factory Racing teammates, Kay de Wolf and Lucas Coenen, continue their see-saw duel for the title, with the Dutch rider defending a 46-point lead over his young Belgian rival. Both can expect a solid turnout of their fans to get behind them at Lommel! De Wolf is the only rider lining up for MX2 to have won races here before, which were actually the first two GP race wins of his career, the first in 2021 when he was still only 16 years old!
The event will also see the resumption of the battle for the EMX250 European Championships, with the top three of the series separated by only 19 points, as Bud Racing Kawasaki’s Mathis Valin lies just 13 ahead of Gabriel SS24 KTM teamster Cas Valk, with Valerio Lata just six points further back for Beddini GASGAS Factory Juniors!
The one-off EMX Open European Championship event will also be at Lommel, with a host of professional riders moving up from their domestic Championships to fight it out on the GP stage. The class is unrestricted in terms of age and engine size, and has attracted over 50 riders to enter!
After a truly epic MXGP of Czech Republic that saw Tim Gajser take Saturday’s RAM Qualifying Race as well as the overall win, with Jorge Prado second and Jeffrey Herlings third after winning race one and charging through the pack in race two, the prospect of seeing these three titans fight it out in the deep sand of Lommel is truly mouth-watering!
The major factor in all of this is the sand, with only Sardegna and Latvia really giving us an idea of what these three might do in such conditions, and Prado added to the spice by declaring himself the ‘King of the Sand’ in the post-race interview at Riola Sardo! The Spaniard did enjoy a perfect weekend there during his best period of the season so far, but Herlings found winning form at Kegums to stake his own claim as the master of the soft stuff. Both will need to make ground here, as Gajser’s Loket win saw him stretch his lead to 36 points over Prado, and 55 over Herlings. There is no doubt that “The Bullet” is back to his brilliant best, and his local fans will be hoping to see more of that on the sort of surface that has seen even more dominance than usual throughout his amazing career.
That said, Jeffrey hasn’t won a GP at Lommel since 2018, as he was denied by Kawasaki Racing Team’s Romain Febvre in 2021, and hasn’t made it this far into the season since then. The Dutchman’s wins took place back in 2011 in MX2, and then 2017 & ’18 in MXGP. He also won the Open class at the 2012 ‘Nations, even with him riding the 250 against the world’s best on 450s! Gajser has won there three times in the MXGP class, once in 2019 and twice in 2020, when MXGP was here three times in the COVID-affected season. Prado won his only MXGP overall in the other event that year, after winning for three straight seasons in MX2 from 2017 to ’19.
Another rider that is entered for MXGP is Monster Energy Yamaha Factory MXGP rider Jago Geerts, who has been out since getting injured in his MXGP debut back at the opening round in Argentina. The Belgian has won at Lommel in MX2 for the last three years, and while it will be a different prospect in his return from injury in MXGP, he will certainly be encouraged by his previous success at the venue.
Febvre has been incredibly strong here in recent years, with GP wins in 2021 and ’23, and will hope to get amongst the title contenders in his second event back from injury. Fantic Factory Racing star Brian Bogers claimed his only career GP victory to date at Lommel in 2022, where he shared race wins with his 2024 teammate Glenn Coldenhoff.
The riders currently in fourth and fifth, Monster Energy Yamaha Factory MXGP’s Calvin Vlaanderen and Kawasaki Racing Team’s Jeremy Seewer, have both twice been on the podium at Lommel, but yet to taste victory. As well as Coldenhoff, they will be keen to keep their consistent season going and prevent Febvre from fighting back up the Championship order past them!
JM Racing Honda rider Brent van doninck, in his return from injury last weekend at Loket, incredibly became the first Belgian to score points in the MXGP class this season with an impressive ride for 8th overall. In his more favoured terrain, he is likely to push even higher up the order at his home Grand Prix, with a lot of home support behind him!
The battle at the top of the order is not to be missed – who can call themselves the ‘King of the Sand’ and command the Championship momentum after this one?!
MXGP – World Championship Top 10 Classification: 1. Tim Gajser (SLO, HON), 663 Points; 2. Jorge Prado (ESP, GAS), 627 Points; 3. Jeffrey Herlings (NED, KTM), 608 Pts; 4. Calvin Vlaanderen (NED, YAM), 471 Pts; 5. Jeremy Seewer (SUI, KAW), 451 Pts; 6. Glenn Coldenhoff (NED, FAN), 389 Pts; 7. Romain Febvre (FRA, KAW), 363 Points; 8. Kevin Horgmo (NOR, HON), 283 Pts; 9. Pauls Jonass (LAT, HON), 274 Pts; 10. Valentin Guillod (SUI, HON), 273 Pts.
The MX2 World Championship has been a brilliant one so far this season, with the result very much in doubt before every Grand Prix, even if the Championship lead has been consistently held by Dutchman Kay de Wolf since the end of the very first weekend of racing, and his fifth overall victory of the year at Loket was a result of persistent speed and enough patience to deal with the madness around him!
His Nestaan Husqvarna Factory Racing teammate, Lucas Coenen, has shown just as much speed, if not sometimes more, but hitting the ground again in the Czech Republic halted his impressive run of five race victories when you include the RAM Qualifying Races from both Lombok and Loket. Looking back to the duels in the sand between the pair in both Sardegna and Latvia, it was Kay who won back on the Mediterannean island, but Lucas who got the better of his teammate to finish second only to his twin brother Sacha in the Baltic State.
With a taste of progress in the Championship still fresh on his lips from his success in Indonesia, and a feeling that he may have the edge on pace with his home crowd behind him, Lucas will certainly be hungry for his first win on home soil, even though De Wolf has undoubted form on this circuit from years gone by. Kay took race wins in both 2021 and 2022, just missing out on overall victory to Jago Geerts on both occasions.
Behind them, Red Bull GASGAS Factory Racing star Simon Laengenfelder once again missed the chance for his first GP win of the year in Loket as he was hunted down by De Wolf in the final laps, but the German will certainly not give up as he looks to secure at least the bronze medal, and pounce if either or both of the Husqvarna riders slip up as we approach the last third of the season.
Red Bull KTM Factory Racing again saw crashes for all three of their riders in the Czech Republic, and although Liam Everts scored a consistent fourth overall, both Andrea Adamo and Sacha Coenen failed to finish in race one, and the Italian could not return for race two, making their title chances now look very slim. All three will be hungry for race wins, however, and their skills in the sand are not in question, especially Sacha after his overall victory in Latvia!
Monster Energy Triumph Racing still have high hopes of podium success, or even overall victory, and Mikkel Haarup would dearly love to deliver on a circuit where a lot of their testing has been carried out.
MX2 – World Championship Top 10 Classification: 1. Kay de Wolf (NED, HUS), 626 Points; 2. Lucas Coenen (BEL, HUS), 580 Pts; 3. Simon Laengenfelder (GER, GAS), 560 Points; 4. Liam Everts (BEL, KTM), 515 Pts; 5. Andrea Adamo (ITA, KTM), 457 Pts; 6. Mikkel Haarup (DEN, TRI), 433 Pts; 7. Rick Elzinga (NED, YAM), 382 Pts; 8. Sacha Coenen (BEL, KTM), 362 Pts; 9. Oriol Oliver (ESP, KTM), 236 Pts; 10. Ferruccio Zanchi (ITA, HON), 229 Pts.
Text/Bild: Infront