With Jeremy Seewer slated for his final MX2 campaign in 2017, Suzuki has added a pair of young riders to strengthen their future in the FIM World Motocross Championship.
Australian Hunter Lawrence and Dutch teenager Bas Vaessen will both move up from the EMX250 European Championship to content the MX2 class in 2017. Lawrence, 16, was a race winner in the 2016 EMX250 championship before a right knee injury ended his season early.
Suzuki has also signed Lawrence’s younger brother Jett to contest the EMX250 class next season alongside Zach Pichon, the son of former double 250cc World Champion Mickael Pichon.
“After Jeremy and Bas, we are very honoured to sign Hunter Lawrence,” said team Suzuki general manager Stefan Everts. “We had a great opportunity to work together and thinking about the future and what I have seen of Hunter so far, he will fit in perfectly to our programme. After one-or-two years I feel that he can be a really strong contender in the world championship. He was really strong in his first races in the European Championship and he adapted very fast to Euro tracks. So I’m very pleased to have this kid on-board and also his brother [Jett].
“We have changed quite a lot with how we are working with the riders and it has already started to pay off in some respects and results; Bas is showing good things and Jeremy is improving a lot. For the Lawrence family I think it was important the trust and resources we could provide and they are really happy to come on-board. I hope this is the next step for us in building up the whole Team Suzuki structure.”
Suzuki previously announced that Lithuanian Arminas Jasikonis would join Kevin Strijbos in the MXGP class for 2017.
