Suzuki World MXGP team excited for Qatar season opener
By TMX Archives on 22nd Feb 17
With a successful pre-season under their belts, the Suzuki World MXGP team riders head to the Losail International Circuit in Qatar with a lot of excitement for the start of the new 2017 World Motocross Championships this weekend.
All five riders competed well at the two International races and just as importantly came out of them relatively unscathed, in what was a good warm-up for both rider and machine.
With the launch of the new RM-Z450WS earlier this month, all eyes have been on bike to see how well it performed on the race track and under the guidance of Kevin Strijbos and Arminas Jasikonis, it has been a great start.
General Manager Stefan Everts gave his thoughts on 2017 so far: "We had a surprisingly good pre-season, but I don't want to expect too much from the new bike too early. It has been well received after the launch and we had some good results with it after not doing too much testing. AJ has been riding well and Kevin has been steady in the pre-season races, so I think we're heading in a good direction.”
At Hawkstone Park, the pair went 1-2 in qualifying and then proceeded to get third (Jasikonis) and fifth (Strijbos) overall in the racing, and then at Lacapelle, AJ again got third overall which included a first place in moto two that really impressed people on a hard-pack track that isn't typically his strong suit. "So far, so good. I'm really excited for Qatar. These two pre-season races went quite well. Lacapelle was a really nice second moto, a quite unexpected win, but it brought some really good motivation to me. We still need to improve some stuff, but we are on the right path,” said the Lithuanian.
Strijbos again showed his consistency with a pair of fourth place finishes in France, after a fifth overall in England and now they both board the plane to Qatar highly motivated to continue this good early form.
