Monster Energy Triumph Racing team manager Vincent Bereni speaking on his enthusiasm he and the entire Triumph organization have for bringing MX2 World Championship racer Mikkel Haarup into the fold for 2024:
“We are excited to welcome Mikkel Haarup to the Monster Energy Triumph Racing team,” stated Bereni. “Together, we will begin a historic season competing with Triumph in the FIM Motocross World Championship. Mikkel is a very experienced rider in the MX2 class and this is very important to Triumph. He has already shown impressive skill and speed on the bike, and with his motivation, combined with our team’s work ethic and experience, we will work hard to achieve our goals.”
Seventh in the 2022 FIM MX2 Motocross World Championship, Mikkel Haarup was positioned for a breakout year in 2023. However, the Dane’s campaign got off to a wobbly start when after placing 13th in the season opening MXGP of Patagonia, Argentina, atop a Kawasaki, and he parted ways with DRT Racing and team owner Steve Dixon. Picked up on the fly by Walderman Zichanowisch’s WZ KTM organization, Haarup competed in eight Grands Prix for the KTM team before suffering an arm injury at the MXGP of Sumbawa, Indonesia, in June. Ultimately 18th in the final World Championship MX2 point table, Haarup is thrilled to be with the sprawling new Triumph race effort and has been hammering away and bashing out the practice laps on the 2024 Triumph TF 250-X.
![Mikkel Haarup]()
Mikkel Haarup Triumph ![Camden McLellan and Mikkel Haarup.]()
Camden McLellan and Mikkel Haarup. Triumph
“Actually, I’m in Spain right now,” explained Haarup of sorting out the 249.95cc Triumph TF 250-X. “Our 2024 season starts late February, the beginning of March. At the moment, we’re doing a little bit of preseason preparation. I mean, it’s not anything that intense as we still have Christmas coming up where we will have a couple of days off. We started to get into it and putting in some hours and getting comfortable with the bike. We’ve been testing quite a few things on the bike, just to know more about the bike, especially with it being new. And the reason that we chose Spain to test, and train is because like California, it’s one of the better places with weather, which allows you to do a whole lot of work without having to worry about the track conditions or having to worry about getting sick because it’s too cold and shit like that. So that’s basically what we are up to right now. My coach is here. We are in the far south of Spain, and we pretty much can’t get any further away from where I live normally. We’re pretty close to Africa, as well.”
Joining Haarup on the Triumph team for the 2024 MX season will be new teammate Camden McLellan. Straight out of South Africa and testing away on the Triumph TF 250-X, nineteen-year-old McLellan commented on the machine, “I will say I was very, very, very blown away, in a great way, when I first hopped on the bike. There is no doubt about it, that it is a race-winning bike.”
Mikkel Haarup wholeheartedly agrees with his teammate’s take on the new Triumph.
“I feel very similar to what Camden does,” pointed out Haarup. “I’m very impressed. It’s a positive surprise. Especially when you hear about a new brand coming into the sport, you’re very nervous that it might not be very legitimate. You see all of these brands coming in at times, especially in Europe, and they just never really make it because for some reason or another, they don’t have either the financial support to back it up, or they struggle with just building a bike that will last. What surprised me when I tested the bike the first time was how prepared the guys were and as far as I know, if you come in prepared you will have a lot less issues. So that was the first thing that I noticed. As I got on the bike, I could feel the bike was strong. It had great power and handling. It’s a great looking bike, as well. It's one of the best-looking bikes, if you ask me. There are great people behind it. I’m sure Camden told you all about the people. Yeah, all in all, you can feel that the package is good. I mean obviously mistakes happen, but even when mistakes happen, they’ve got the engineers to back it up. Everything comes together and they are quickly able to turn things around and move forward so that we learn from it. That’s pretty cool. It’s been a great experience. As soon as I realized that was how the team was going to be built and that’s how they work, I was so pleased. It has been an awesome first couple months with the team and I’m very impressed.
“I know they knew me already,” furthered the Dane, talking about how both he and Triumph came together for 2024. “I’ve been in the MX2 and in the sport for quite a while. I’ve been professional since I was fourteen years old. I’ve been at it all quite a while already. I’ve been through a couple of teams and in the last couple of teams there have been some ups and downs. The season was going along, and I didn’t have a manager at the time and I was looking for one because of the trouble that I’ve had with the previous teams. It wasn’t from my side. They were not holding up to their end of the deal and I was looking for a manager. I ended up with a manager and shortly after that, he contacted me regarding Triumph. He threw it at me and told me, ‘You know this could be an option if you’re lucky. Let’s try the bike. Let’s try it out.’ So, I tried the bike out and I was very, very surprised in a positive way. Things moved on and we got a deal on the table, and I took it.”
Even this early on in the genesis of the Monster Energy Triumph Racing Team, the team and its staff of managers, technicians, and mechanics have all displayed a world-class work ethic and approach to maximizing overall performance.
“Yeah, they do have an amazing work ethic,” said Haarup. “I would say the majority of the people involved in this are only thinking about winning and that’s what I want and those are the people that I want to surround myself with. It’s a positive feeling all around because when everybody is working toward the same goal and putting in all the work and effort, it’s going to be crazy and the results that we bring in will hopefully be as a great as the effort we’re putting in already.”
Taking a quick glance over his shoulder at what was his 2023 MX2 World Championship, Mikkel Haarup is brutally honest.
“I thought it was crap,” he laughed. “To be brutally honest with you, it didn’t live up to the preparation I made coming into the season. Also, a lot of things happened contract-wise, and I switched teams pretty much after the first round because of some technical issues. Yeah, I was struggling, no doubt about it. I got a top five in Germany. All-in-all, I was not impressed with myself because I knew what I could achieve if I had a bike that suited me. If I had winter training on the brand of the bike that I was racing on, which I didn’t have this season, it would have helped. A lot of things were just not ideal. I took it all with my head raised high because I knew that if I worked hard and I kept on looking forward and didn’t complain, I knew that the people respected me and that they could see the potential in me. I’m happy with the position that I’ve put myself in now. I’ve surrounded myself with some great people. Yeah, the 2023 season wasn’t great. It was actually far from great. We had a lot of issues off the track. We got those solved. Everybody that I involved myself with, I can look them in the eye. Everybody is good and I’m happy. Yeah, it was a learning year. Sometimes you have to go through some lows to reach some highs, and I think that’s what happened. I want to surround myself with people that have knowledge and who have been there before. To make a great team, everything has to come together, especially when you want to race for a world title. That’s what I see. I see potential here. I’m going to try and make it happen. That’s pretty much it.”
The 68th annual version of the FIM Motocross World Championship will launch on March 10, 2024, with the MXGP of Argentina. Scheduled for 20 Grands Prix run over 29 weeks, the globetrotting campaign will visit 15 different nations along the way and Mikkel Haarup and Triumph are ready to leave their mark on it all.
“It’s going to be interesting to see,” the #11 said. “I think I’ll have a better picture when I’ve done a couple of preseason races. I’m planning on coming in confident and well-prepared with great speed and good starts. I believe that I’ll be racing for the win. Yeah, that’s pretty much the mindset. That’s pretty much it. Go in, do some preseason races, see where we stack up and see what sort of improvements we need to make, and come out swinging for the first GP in Argentina.”
