At last the wonderful world of Grand Prix Motocross returns to its spiritual heartland of Northern Europe, touching down at the rather wonderful Valkenswaard Circuit, just outside Eindhoven. And we can sum up the forthcoming event in just five words. Cold, Sand, Cairoli, Herlings, Masterclass.
Like most Dutch circuits, and indeed much of Holland itself, the Valkenswaard track is relatively flat, with only a small man made hill at the far end of the circuit to contribute any contours to the circuit. But the Earthmovers and bulldozers of the Youthstream track builders will have sculpted the deep red sand into a truly challenging track, the talents of Justin Barclay and Greg Atkins providing everything from monster jumps and rhythm sections of huge sand whoops and deep berms.
What is more, unlike the first two Grand Prix, the Netherlands fixture will have one essential ingredient for any international motocross championship – a huge and psychopathically enthusiastic crowd. You can expect cow bells, chainsaws, foam Stetsons, huge orange clogs, Viking helmets with horns, flares, klaxons, drunk Germans, over excited Italians – the whole shebang. If you’ve not got anything planned for Easter Monday, get on the Chunnel, drive 180 miles east and you’ll be there. The racing is great and Eindhoven is packed with reasonable hotels, hundreds of bars and very tall attractive women – what’s not to like?
The Moto team bus will be leaving bright and early on Saturday morning, loaded up with cameras, Go-Pros, microphones, pasties, coffee and chocolate biscuits, not to mention around half a ton of warm clothing, hats and gloves….
Re-run of last years Valkenswaard GP
MX1
OK let’s take an objective look at who might dominate on Monday. A mere six months ago, the eyes of the world were on the Motocross of Nations at Lommel, a stone’s throw away from the Valkenswaard track – could the American’s retain their title? And would Antonio Cairoli finally break his run of bad luck at this event that had lasted since Matterley?
Cairoli answered both questions emphatically with a show of sand riding that was simply awesome to witness. The Sicilian is capable of riding across the most difficult of surfaces at a pace that most of us could not even ride across a flat field, and his speed led the American team captain Ryan Dungey to concede that they had been taught a riding lesson that day.
With Antonio living only a few miles from the three great sand tracks of Lierop, Lommel and Valkenswaard, this is effectively his home GP and will want to use the GP to extend his ten point lead over second place Gautier Paulin, and you would not want to bet against him. In what was a completely and scarily accurate prediction, the top four inThailand were exactly as we had said, and this has left the top four places exactly the same, with Desalle trailing Paulin and Tommy Searle in a strong fourth, albeit tied with Big Ken.
Tommy was on cracking form at FatCat for Round 1 of the Maxxis and we would like to think that he could continue this form and improve one more place to get a podium. With such a packed field, it’s going to be a scrap for the points whatever happens, but we think that the home advantage will favour those from the flatlands.
Prediction: Cairoli, DeDycker, Desalle
MX2
Do we need to repeat the opening paragraph from the MX1? Not far off, as Herlings was just as dominant and impressive at the Nations. After a season that made Herlings into some kind of pantomime villain, the Nations proved a turning point for the unreasonably talented KTM rider. Freed from the animosity of Tommy vs. Jeffrey show, Herlings talent could be viewed on its own merits, the European fans uniting in their support for the rider that helped to spank the Yanks.
2013 has only enforced the inescapable fact that Herlings has no competition in this class – in fact it’s actually a worse situation than MX1! Herlings has already put out a cheeky tweet about Total domination, and you have to agree – Herlings will win by a country mile. Second place is perhaps a bit more of a surprise with the KTM rookie Romain Febvre knocking aside the likes of Nicholls, Coldenhoff, Tixier, Charlier and Anstie. Fevre backed up his results in both Thailand, and will want to maintain that momentum into Valkenswaard. But there will be a lot of Brits wanting to put a dent in his progress and out of all of them it’s Anstie that gets our vote to be the strongest challenger. Pocock did well here last year and looked good at Fat Cat, and maybe EBB could finally have a good GP? Can they get on the podium – we’re not so sure.
Prediction: Herlings, Febvre, Charlier
You can watch the GP on MX Life from Youthstream, and if you keep the Moto Facebook and website open at the same time, you’ll get live updates, Instagrams, race reports and general malarkey from the Moto team. If you are going to the GP, come and say hello and buy us a hot chocolate!
Source: http://moto.mpora.com/featured-box/motos-valkensawaard-gp-preview-back-to-what-we-know-best.html
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