A Musquin season
By TMX Archives on 29th Dec 09
IN the end it was Marvin Musquin and KTM by a mile, but seldom can there have been a more controversial season of GP racing than this year's World MX2 series.
The French teenager started the year on Honda, and took his first podium and his first GP in red before he took the red plate to the orange camp just over a third of the way through the season.
Shadowed for the next five GPs by a legal dispute which was only settled in his favour when KTM, or, more precisely, Red Bull opened its wallet to buy out his previous contract. The skinny kid from the south-west of France even had to sit out the Swedish round in July before ending the series in a flourish with three wins in the final four GPs to put the title beyond doubt.
But there was much more too! The sensational arrival on the adult scene of Ken Roczen, now the youngest GP winner of all-time in a debut year in which he has a career average well over 30-points per GP.
A season which promised so much for Britain, with Shaun Simpson the pre-season favourite and Zach Osborne a GP winner at round three, ended with Jake Nicholls the highest-placed rider with UK connections in 17th place in MX2.
KTM made a wretched start to the campaign. Even before it started raining, Rui Goncalves had knocked himself out with an over-optimistic first turn in the qualifying race at Faenza, and Shaun Simpson had to push a dead ‘Toomer' back to pit-lane after the kill-switch got clogged with mud in his third crash of the one and only moto staged before rejoining the action to finish 11th.
FOR FULL ROUND-UP OF THE MX2 SEASON SEE T+MX NEWS, FRIDAY, JANUARY 1, 2010World MX2 Motocross Champion Marvin Musquin caught in exhilerating action at the Kegums GP in Latvia where he had a good round with a win and runner-up positions to take the championship overall.