KTM power surge
By TMX Archives on 23rd Mar 12
ANTONIO CAIROLI cemented his place amongst the legends of motocross lastSeptember when he claimed his fifth FIM motocross world championship, joining the elite list that reads Roger DeCoster, Eric Geboers, Georges Jobe and Joel Smets.
Only Joel Robert (six) and Stefan Everts with a mighty 10 have won more titles.
By taking his place on the list, proud Sicilian Cairoli has broken the Belgian stranglehold, making his feat even more impressive.
While the factory KTMs totally dominated the 2011 MX2 World Championship, in MX1 things were a little more balanced, with seven different riders winning the qualifying races, eight riders winning motos and six taking overall GP victories.
In the hands of Tony Cairoli and Max Nagl the KTM 350SX-F won seven from 15 qualifying races, 10 from 30 motos and six out of 15 GPs.
So while it was not quite as dominant a display, consistency proved vital in terms of winning the title.
If we are to continue the comparison theme started in last week's paper – when I wrote about Ken Roczen's MX2 title-winning machine – then riding the Tony Cairoli bikes of 2010 and 2011 was a little more interesting.
The 2010 350SX-F was a revolution in itself, it was brand-new and something of a work in progress.
It was in essence the only real factory bike in the way we used to know it, by virtue of there being no other bike like it on track or in production.
Despite all that, Cairoli took 50% of the race wins on the way to his fourth world title.
When the gate dropped in Bulgaria at the start of the 2011 season it appeared that there were two new challengers to the crown – Steven Frossard (Yamaha) and Clement Desalle (Suzuki).
And as they battled over the top two positions, Cairoli was left at the bottom end of the top ten with a 7-10 scorecard.
Fortunately for him they would be his worst results and over the course of the next 13 GPs he would finish off the podium just three more times.
Impressive stuff and he won the title with a round still to go.
So, having been given the chance of a blast on the Cairoli bike all I can say about it is WOW!
FOR FULL TEST AND PICTURES SEE T+MC NEWS MARCH 23
