GP Report: Talking Points & Notes from the MXGP of Flanders

Febvre’s racing ‘joie de vivre’ came in a fertile period for MXGP. The tightening of the MXGP contest now sees four riders—Gajser, Febvre, Tony Cairoli, and Jorge Prado respectively—split by only 14 points after 2 motos and six rounds with five different winners. The previous victors at Lommel since 2016 were Jeffrey Herlings, Prado, and Gajser. Febvre was fast but not fancied for the overall.

His accomplishment was accompanied by a riotous burnout on the concrete Lommel paddock floor during the pouring rain on Sunday afternoon and the success only just eclipsed the efforts of Herlings, second on the podium, who was an eleventh-hour entrant to the Grand Prix. The Dutchman powered past Febvre to win the first moto and then extracted all his skill and energy to recover from a third turn crash and tangle with countryman Glenn Coldenhoff (11th overall but much faster than his results would indicate due to first lap incidents) to fly back from the rear of the pack to fifth. It was a super-human performance from an athlete that had fractured his left shoulder blade at his home Grand Prix two weeks earlier and had been advised to sit out the visits to the Czech Republic, Belgium and forthcoming Latvia for a full recovery. Herlings hit the wall when he reached fifth and the seven-second gap to Gajser, and when Febvre streaked past Prado for the chequered flag he was the one with bragging rights.

“I didn’t live in Belgium for seven-eight years for nothing! A good day,” said Febvre, now a Lommel resident. “We worked on the starts this week and it paid off today. To win here in Lommel means a lot to me. I’ve been close a few years, and I feel my sand style has improved a lot also. I feel free, I feel clean, and I feel really thankful to my team.”

Febvre is in the midst of another big decision about his future. A decent contract offer to stay with Kawasaki but in the confines of the IceOne team was the repeated gossip in Lommel. It will be the most significant leap since he left Yamaha at the end of 2019; the brand where he’d been since 2015 and is still the brand’s last world champion. As for the chance of bringing Kawasaki their first #1 plate in the four-stroke era (oh, the irony if MX Ecsa could deliver that bounty) then Febvre was firmly dismissive of any hype. “Believe it or not but I don’t care at the moment,” he claimed. “We’ve only done six races. It’s always good to be close to the lead, for sure, but to have the red plate now means nothing.”

Notes:

-Lommel, of course, is the popular winter training hub for many riders and teams based in the region. KTM and the two factory Husqvarna squads are housed close to the large sand ‘pit’, enclosed within a large industrial park. The old factory Suzuki team were located nearby, and other set-ups are within reasonable driving distance. Lommel’s resistance to the elements gives it an all-weather status—there have even been training photos from the site with snow around the track edges—and the demands of the never-ending sand means there are fewer tougher tracks on the grand prix trail. In 2020 Lommel hosted a daunting triple-header of events as MXGP fought to tally a full championship. This time the riders had to digest sand only once, but the fixture was the third of four back-to-back dates. A common post-race observation revolved around riders failing to find the crucial flow and rhythm at Lommel. Comments by the likes of Cairoli, Prado, Shaun Simpson (the 2015 winner) all hinted at how the track was already extremely rough from timed practice. “It would be like that for a second moto in a normal race,” gasped Prado, who was fourth overall. Simpson’s comments were interesting. The Scot had an engine problem in the second moto that caused a DNF but he felt the smaller and more condensed bumps created by the support classes on Saturday—many of which were left for the Grand Prix classes for Sunday—prevented the GP riders from being able to attack the spots in normal fashion. The flow was more ‘stuttery’ and stop-start rather than rolling and bouncing. The track caught out many, especially the world champion.

-“Obviously, too many mistakes,” assessed HRC’s Tim Gajser who dropped the Honda at least once in each moto to go 7-4 for 6th overall and missed the podium for the third time in the last four races. “I was feeling good in the morning and my speed during the race was Okay. The crash and losing the goggles meant the first race was a struggle. We definitely need to work on these mistakes. I need to reset myself!” Some observers felt that Gajser’s second moto error in the Czech Republic seven days earlier gave principal rival Herlings the incentive to risk a setback with his shoulder in Belgium. The Dutchman had been given a glimpse of hope that his championship aspirations for 2021 might not be over after all.

-The ‘will-he-won’t-he?’ around Herlings began on Saturday morning. Thirteen days after Ivo Monticelli’s front wheel had fractured his shoulder blade, the Dutchman was considering a return at Lommel based on his famed ability to manage pain, the sand, and in consideration of the world championship standings that saw him only 51 points down on Gajser before the gate had dropped in Belgium. Herlings passed a medical check, his KTM 450 SX-F passed through technical control, and then he completed a training moto on Saturday morning to inform the team that he’d try to race on Sunday. An eventual 1-5 meant a 9-point gain on Gajser and reduction of the gap to 42. The performance defied belief although the repercussions of his exertions will only come to light in the next days. Post-race Herlings seemed genuinely distressed with the drama at the start of the second moto and the nagging thought that a second GP win of 2021 had escaped him. If this was his speed and potential carrying an injury, then it is scary to think what he would have done fully fit. His winning margin over Febvre in the first moto was almost 30 seconds. “With the way I feel now then it was not a good decision [to race] but a lot of championships have slipped away [from me in the past],” he said afterwards. “I’m just like my trophy on the podium: I seem to be made of glass. It’s pretty frustrating at times…but right now I think I am [mentally] in a good place. I don’t want to give up this championship so quickly. We’ll keep fighting and hopefully stay in one piece.”

-MX2 saw Monster Energy Yamaha’s Jago Geerts succeed at home and without Red Bull KTM’s World Champion Tom Vialle (the Frenchman was seventh and missing bike time due to his right-hand injury) or teammate Ben Watson to worry about as had been the case in 2020, Geerts was able to deal with two fairly uneventful races to please the crowd; welcomed back to Lommel and sorely missed last autumn. In the absence of Roan Van De Moosdijk (a broken scaphoid) it was teenager (and the cooly named) Kay De Wolf who again animated the Dutch fans at the fence sides with a first-ever moto victory and a second podium finish of his rookie season on the Rockstar Energy Husqvarna. De Wolf rode brilliantly to keep Geerts at bay in the second moto. If he can add his sand speed to other surfaces then the Netherlands have yet another ‘Herlings successor’ in their midst. De Wolf’s showing was further evidence of how the proximity in the level between MX2 and the EMX250 European Championship feeder series is narrowing. De Wolf, Red Bull KTM’s Mattia Guadagnini, and Monster Energy Yamaha’s Thibault Benistant have all won motos this year despite being rookies in Grand Prix. It’s hard to deduce whether an exceptional generation is fast emerging or the MX2 class is lacking in authentic star power.