by Chase Stallo
Sign of the Lap Times: Guadalajara GP
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 | 3:50 PM
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PrintHovering under a cloud of controversy stemming for all but two GP regulars (Max Anstie and Michael Leib, who actually wasn't even a regular when the GP tour began this year) sitting out Saturday’s qualifying races due to poor track conditions and safety concerns, the inaugural Grand Prix of Mexico in Guadalajara was dealt a breath of fresh air on Sunday. The quartet of Antonio Cairoli, Christophe Pourcel, Clement Desalle and David Philippaerts put on a great show in the MX1 class breathing life back into a race that, for a moment, was in dire straights.
With a 1-1 sweep of the MX2 class, Jeffery Herlings continues to distance himself from archrival Tommy “Gun” Searle. Herlings now holds a commanding 40-point lead over teammate Jeremy van Horebeek, with Searle 41 points back. It’s early in the game, but if Searle hopes to capture the World Title that has continuously escaped him he needs to begin to apply the pressure to Herlings.
An already deep MX1 field got a little deeper in Mexico. David Philippaerts, whose career seemed in flux after breaking both wrists last summer, relegating him to seven months off the bike, pulled off the improbable in Mexico—winning moto 2 in a definitive battle of wills with Desalle, Pourcel and Cairoli.
We’ll touch more on the racing below; in the meantime let’s move onto the lap charts to see how it all broke down.
Grand Prix MX1 Class
Moto 1
| Lap Rank | Finish | Best Lap | In Lap | Rider |
| 1 | 1 | 1:52.472 | 14 | Antonio Cairoli |
| 2 |
2 | 1:53.126 | 15 | Clement Desalle |
| 3 | 16 | 1:53.019 | 2 | Christophe Pourcel |
| 4 | 3 | 1:54.439 | 2 | Ken de Dycker |
| 5 | 10 | 1:55.212 | 7 | David Philippaerts |
| 6 | 6 | 1:55.856 | 15 | Tanel Leok |
| 7 | 8 | 1:56.110 | 11 | Xavier Boog |
| 8 |
4 | 1:56.343 | 2 | Gautier Paulin |
| 9 | 5 | 1:56.511 | 8 | Kevin Strijbos |
| 10 | 13 | 1:56.782 | 3 | Sebastien Pourcel |
Moto 2
| Lap Rank | Finish | Best Lap | In Lap | Rider |
| 1 | 3 | 1:50.216 | 3 | Antonio Cairoli |
| 2 |
4 | 1:50.992 | 2 | Christophe Pourcel |
| 3 | 2 | 1:51.907 | 5 | Clement Desalle |
| 4 | 7 | 1:52.022 | 2 | Xavier Boog |
| 5 | 1 | 1:52.142 | 3 | David Philippaerts |
| 6 | 6 | 1:52.388 | 3 | Tanel Leok |
| 7 | 5 | 1:52.397 | 4 | Ken de Dycker |
| 8 |
8 | 1:52.412 | 6 | Rui Goncalves |
| 9 | 9 | 1:53.100 | 9 | Jonathan Barragan |
| 10 | 14 | 1:53.443 | 2 | Sebastien Pourcel |
After an uninspiring start to the season in the sands of Valkenswaard, a resurgent Christophe Pourcel resurfaced. A second in Bulgaria followed by his first Grand Prix overall since 2007 in Italy saw Pourcel catapult back into the thick of the championship. Another win from Pourcel at the Grand Prix of Mexico may have finally begun to shake the seemingly unflappable Antonio Cairoli. But it was not to be.
Pourcel lead early in moto 1 but was chased down by Cairoli and Clement Desalle, and then had to retire with four laps remaining after his rear wheel grabbed a chunk of green fencing. That resulted in a 16th and a costly blow in the championship standings.
An old fashioned slugfest played out in moto 2. Pourcel led early but again would get pressure from Desalle, Cairoli and a new challenger—Philippaerts. The four would go blow for blow until the final lap, with Philippaerts outlasting Desalle for the win. Cairoli took third and the overall.
Super Tony set the fastest lap in both motos en route to the overall
Ray Archer/ KTMImages photo
Grand Prix MX2 Class
Moto 1
| Lap Rank | Finish | Best Lap | In Lap | Rider |
| 1 | 1 | 1:55.439 | 4 |
Jeffery Herlings |
| 2 | 3 | 1:55.591 | 2 | Jeremy van Horebeek |
| 3 | 2 | 1:55.867 | 2 | Tommy Searle |
| 4 | 22 | 1:56.180 | 4 | Valentin Teillet |
| 5 |
6 | 1:56.317 | 6 | Joel Roelants |
| 6 | 5 | 1:56.981 | 6 | Jordi Tixier |
| 7 | 4 | 1:57.179 | 20 | Dylan Ferrandis |
| 8 | 7 | 1:57.502 | 6 | Christophe Charlier |
| 9 | 8 | 1:57.502 | 6 | Max Anstie |
| 10 | 15 | 1:58.362 | 4 | Glenn Coldenhoff |
Moto 2
| Lap Rank | Finish | Best Lap | In Lap | Rider |
| 1 | 1 | 1:52.599 | 1 |
Jeffrey Herlings |
| 2 | 2 | 1:55.454 | 13 | Tommy Searle |
| 3 | 4 | 1:55.837 | 18 | Joel Roelants |
| 4 | 3 | 1:56.088 | 3 | Jeremy van Horebeek |
| 5 |
8 | 1:57.208 | 8 | Jordi Tixier |
| 6 | 5 | 1:57.902 | 3 | Christophe Charlier |
| 7 | 7 | 1:57.902 | 3 | Glenn Coldenhoff |
| 8 | 6 | 1:58.264 | 11 | Jake Nicholls |
| 9 | 10 | 1:58.416 | 8 | Harri Kullas |
| 10 | 9 | 1:58.946 | 18 | Max Anstie |
It was the Jeffery Herlings show in the MX2 class. The Dutch phenom cruised to a 1-1 performance, extending an already comfortable points lead. Meanwhile, a huge mistake early in moto 2 would cost Tommy Searle any chance at the overall. The Brit would fight back to finish second but was never a challenge to Herlings. Already 41 points back of Herlings, Searle can ill-afford another costly mistake this weekend in Brazil.
Returning to action after a horrid crash in Italy, Joel Roelants picked up right where he left off. Roelants soldiered to a fourth overall in his return, but left an impression by putting down his fastest lap of moto 2 on lap 18.
Herlings finished 1-1 for the overall in Mexico.
Ray Archer / KTM Images photo
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Cairoli's best lap was 1:50.216. Put James Stewart and his Suzuki in there and James would have (easily) pulled off consistent 1:43.143's and lapped the field. Yes, he's THAT good again.
Yes, you are completely right, and Villopoto's fastest lap time would have been 1: 30. How old or something else are you?
@J_Sloan that is only if James Stewart is happy and feeling good about himself and we don't really know that at this time. Otherwise I'm not sure anyone could beat TC's time.
@ manes Have you seen James Stewart on the Suzuki? He would beat RV by over a minute...with ease. Stewart will be playing with people this summer and in the 2013 SX series, no one stands a chance. Stewart will win ALL the SX races and gap RV by at least 30 seconds per race. Stamp it.
@ J_Sloan, I'll give you this: Some team on the G.P. circuit might actually want to pay JS to race their motorcycles because, nobody is doing it in the U.S.
Red Bull KTM (U.S.) = pass
Kawasaki U.S.A. = pass
American Honda = pass
U.S. Suzuki = well.......o.k. but, can we pay you in Hammatsu city script?
Yamaha U.S. = Had a very lucrative deal on the books (reportedly the best contract $ of any current U.S. racer) but, well......everyone knows the rest of that story.
Stewart has every incentive to do well (this summer and beyond) because, if he falls flat, there are only Honda & KTM left and Honda has Barcia (plus Tomac, Bogle, etc) and KTM has Dungey, Roczen, Musquin, Herlings, etc, etc, etc.
I personally don't think the G.P. circuit would suit Stewart much less accomodate his antics. They actually race A LOT on the G.P.'s
Carioli is well adjusted to the G.P. life, schedule, etc. and it would be a difficult task for any of the U.S. racers to go to his backyard and beat him.
Wow! I feel like there is a stewtard among us.... If JS7 could stay on the bike he would win every race he entered that Reed, Villopoto, Dungey and Canard were not racing. Have you seen James on the Suzuki crash his brains out???? You will! I hope he does well. He is one of the great riders of all time. Do i think his lap times will be good at the end of the motos? no Do I think he will win the title? no I just hope that he rides under control and doesn't kill himself or somebody else. Sooner or later riding over your head will bite you. The big crash is still to come! Stay tuned...
Honestly, this is about the GP's. When are you guys going to give them credit. Especially banging on about Stuart, he can't clean up in the US, at home so why is he going to do it here. He has got a lot of sh*t to sort out. Even if he does he is not going to run away with it like he has in the past. Next years SX will be interesting. More of a MX fan but ATM we're still down on Reed, Canard, Townley I believe would have been in there mixing it up.
As for the GP's, MX2 for the last few years have been predictable. Every weekend. I hope Searle can start to show it to Hearlings a little more.
Golly gee Billy Bob can we have a coment section without that guy being brought up in the comments???
The lap times look pretty interesting on the top 20. What I noticed on the Motos showing finishes and time behind leader was that peope inside the top 20 got lapped 5 or 6 times. Theere were jjust not enough people even from the GP ciirciut that could afford or want to go to Mexico? 20th place getting lapped 5 or 6 times is ridicuolus! Where was Pedro G. when Mexico needed him? It had to be difficult going through packs of riders that probably could not even qualify for Loreta Lynn's?
The GP's are a whole different animal, doing the complete series would be tough with all of the climate and terain changes.
It was a good race but poorly organized and poorly administered.
I think they could have done much better with the track. Guadalajara is in the middle of the mountains and for example has a gorge on the north side of it more than a half mile deep. Instead they went for a mostly man made track on the south side of town on the side of a hill. Maybe not as bad as Pala but I think Pala would be the closest national track the comes to mind in the US. The track was well watered and there was no dust. Actually there may have been too much water. It created several mud holes around he track. Overall not a bad track but not a natural layout like they could have had given the terrain that they have around the city.
The administration was bad for several reasons. It was very poorly advertised in Mexico and the turnout was low. I'm not a good guesser but I would think that there were 7000 - 9,000 people at the race, almost all Mexicans. I didn't see any Americans or Canadians.
The worst thing was the online tickets. I bought my online tickets from http://www.superboletos.com online. Being that it was in Mexico and I know about Mexican monopolies, I wasn't sure I could get a ticket at the gate. (It turns out that I could have) So I bought my tickets online. I'm a computer technician and it still took me 3 hours to buy the tickets. And then somehow I bought double tickets. http://www.superboletos.com are bad people. According to the http://www.superboletos.com MAP the tickets that I bought (general) were for almost the whole track except for the elite and preferred sections. COOL!!. But when I got there there was a small general section that included only 2 bleachers on the bottom side of he track where we could see only about 40% of the track. So my 4 general tickets were garbage. And could not be traded up. I had to spend another 90USD per person to get to the good part of the track where we could see everything. And it was almost empty because everybody else had bought general tickets thinking that they had the freedom to look at all the track and didn't want to buy tickets again. Once again http://www.superboletos.com are bad people and the administrators of the race are bad people to allow this to happen.
The races were great. It was impressive to see some of these guys for real. Geofrey Hearling is REALLY fast. I was really impressed by him. Tommy Searle was good but Hearling seems to be in another class. He was the only one that gave competition to Ken Roczen last year. This was not a sand track but it was loose dirt. It looked to me like he rode very conservatively in both motos but he still had a 35 second lead at one point in the second moto. I have no doubt that he will be the 250 World Champion this year.
Cairoli was Cairoli. Fast, consistent and relentless. In the first moto I think he was about 5th in the first lap and worked his way up to first. In the second he settled for a third.
Pourcell looked very smooth and fast. He stated in first place but seemed to fade in the first moto. But then he had a problem that I didn't see and lost a 2 or 3 laps and then just cruised around after that. I understand from the internet that he got tangled in the plastic fencing. In the second moto he also started first and looked very fast and smooth. But Desalle, then Philippaerts, then Cairoli worked their way past him. He still looked very good and butter smooth at the end but they were a little faster.
Desalle is a very deceiving rider. He doesn't look like he's going that fast but he got second in both motos. It's almost like you don't notice him every lap until you realize that he is almost at the front.
David Philippaerts impressed me the most. Not because he was the fastest but because he did a great job. He was involved in a big crash that took out about 8 - 10 people a half a lap into the first moto. He came around on the first lap 30 seconds after the second last guy. And he kept passing people until the end of the race ending up 10th (I think). In the second moto he started 3rd or 4th or 5th and won the race. Very smooth. He looked calm out there.
Good race and I'm glad we went. I just hope they get their stuff together for next year.
I hear what all of you are saying, but James Stewart is on a Suzuki now. He would probably lap Cairoli and gap RV by a minute or more. Didn't you see his practice videos?
any of the gp top 10 would fit easily into our top 10.
Zukes are junk... JS is washed up. Mookie can smoke him.
And Sloan, when you are finished performing a crude act on Suzuki, you might find some time to research the Stephan Everets smoked Buuba Gump....
@ dakat324 James Stewart was not on a Suzuki when Everts beat him. James let him win for reasons unknown, but if James Stewart was on a Suzuki he would have lapped Everts. You know it, I know it, Weege knows it, Reed knows it, and Dungey knows it.