Giuseppe Luongo: “Focus not on quantity but on quality”
With just over a month to go before the start of the highly anticipated 2015 FIM Motocross World Championship in Qatar, Youthstream chairman Guiseppe Luongo provides some explanation on the recently released entry list for the opening round in Losail. So we will start with twenty-eight riders in the premier class “MXGP” and in the year where the starting gate has been expanded to forty pilots.
At the annual meeting for the organizers of the MXGP that took place this year in Geneva. Did the Italian chairman talk about the field of participants and especially the quantity of riders who will start in the opening GP. Especially now that all attention will be on the Monster Energy Kawasaki Racing Team with Ryan Villopoto on board, who is making his debut in the world championship.
“If we look at the entry list in Qatar we have twenty-eight riders,” refers to his words in a press release issued today and partly also to the worrying feeling that some MXGP starting gates had barely twenty riders. “Don't focus on the number, because we get many more riders at the start in Europe, but focus mainly on the quality of the riders. We now have at least twenty-six big names behind the starting gate. This has never happened before in the FIM Motocross World Championship, so you will see the biggest fight for the world title you have ever seen.”
There are six factory teams on the OAT list (officially sanctioned teams) and of the twenty-eight MXGP riders we have an astonishing total of eighteen who have the experience of winning a Grand Prix. Only six riders have not yet reached the podium, including Villopoto.
Qatar will be immediately followed by the third ever Thai Grand Prix (at a new location just west of Bangkok) and then make a long journey to the second ever Argentinian Grand Prix at Neuquen in March. The MXGP calendar has the same number of races as MotoGP and has only one fewer overseas event overall. Youthstream hopes to attract more riders by opening the Grand Prix class, hence the expansion of the starting line to forty participants. A smooth transition is hereby allowed from the European Championship, which the promoters have already grown into a successful and worthy championship. This fits perfectly into the structure of the sport for aspiring professionals.
How teams and athletes react to the prospect in MXGP this year will be judged by the reaction to that extra space to compete in the championship. MXGP is decisive in terms of prestige and attention with the hope that commercial rewards can follow and teams can make their budgets work.
Text: Adam Wheeler / OTOR
Photo: Youthstream
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