Shangai Knights: MXGP hits China
By Team TMX on 14th Sep 26
Jeffrey Herlings might already have had the MXGP World Championship safely in his pocket, but that didn’t stop Romain Febvre from giving The Bullet his biggest fright for some time in Shanghai.
Herlings arrived at the Oriental Beauty Valley MXGP of China having been fastest in an extraordinary 35 consecutive practice sessions and races. He left having stretched that run to 38 – and added yet another Grand Prix victory to the ever-growing numbers in his already ridiculous record book.
But for once, this wasn’t a Sunday stroll.
Febvre pushed him all the way in both races at the Shanghai International Off-Road Circuit, coming within touching distance of the Honda HRC Petronas rider in the closing stages of race two. A mistake on the final lap finally ended the Frenchman’s challenge, leaving Herlings to make it another perfect 1-1 and Febvre to settle for his 101st career podium.
Tom Vialle completed the MXGP podium for a fourth consecutive round, although his third place came despite a difficult day physically after biting his tongue badly in a warm-up crash.
And while the premier-class title was already decided, MX2 had Shanghai feeling much more like a championship final. Camden McLellan needed to win if he was going to keep Guillem Farres waiting for another week. So he did.
The humidity was brutal in Shanghai, and even Herlings admitted it was causing him problems with sweating and fogging goggles. But if the conditions were slowing him down, nobody could tell from the stopwatch.
The morning Warm-up effectively became another instalment of the Herlings-Febrve battle for supremacy, with the Kawasaki rider taking the fight to him. Herlings eventually produced his seventh and final lap to beat Febvre by more than a second, with Jan Pancar third.
When the gate dropped for race one, Vialle got the Fox Holeshot Award for the 10th time this season, but Herlings immediately went after his teammate.
He muscled past Febvre down the start straight and then sliced inside Vialle to take control.
By lap two he had already set the Acerbis Fastest Lap of the weekend.
Febvre, meanwhile, had made life unnecessarily difficult for himself by running wide at the third corner and dropping back to fifth. He set about repairing the damage, picking off Jeremy Seewer, Pancar and Andrea Adamo before the end of the opening lap.
The race then settled into something resembling a chase.
Herlings disappeared up front while Febvre hunted Vialle for second. Pancar was having one of his best MXGP rides of the season, eventually moving into fourth, while Seewer, Calvin Vlaanderen and Pauls Jonass fought over the positions behind.
Pancar’s fourth was his best MXGP finish for more than a year.
At the sharp end, Febvre finally made his move on lap 14. Vialle ran wide in a left-hand hairpin and the Kawasaki man was through.
Herlings had plenty in hand, though, and brought it home 8.3 seconds clear.
The second start was almost a carbon copy, except this time Herlings was the one making the outrageous move. Vialle looked to have repeated his holeshot, only for Herlings to make a savage cut across the Fox Holeshot line and pinch the award by millimetres. Febvre was right there too.
For the first few laps the Frenchman refused to let the Hondas escape, and when Vialle briefly landed off-track on lap four, Febvre nearly found a way through.
Vialle held on to second until lap eight but then Febvre struck.
He dived inside in a left-hander and made the pass, before Vialle again ran briefly off the track over a jump. His challenge for second was effectively over.
That left Febvre with one target. Herlings.
And, for once, the target was coming back towards him.
As the laps wound down, Febvre steadily closed the gap. The difference dropped to under a second and suddenly the seemingly inevitable Herlings victory was anything but inevitable.
The Frenchman kept pushing. Herlings responded. Then, on the final lap, Febvre got a jump horribly wrong. He cross-rutted on the take-off, was kicked sideways and nearly went over the handlebars. That was his chance gone. He held on to the finish and took second, just over a second behind.
Herlings, meanwhile, had done what Herlings does.
The win was his 124th career Grand Prix victory and 235th race win, while his remarkable streak of topping every practice and race session stretched to 38.
“I managed to do enough in both races, mainly the second one, to win,” said Herlings. “Romain rode really good, I think it is one of his best races all year.”
Febvre reckoned it was one of his best weekends of the season, too – and he was particularly pleased with the way the starts had put him in the mix at the front.
“I always performed good in hot conditions, so I felt good all weekend and I kept pushing until the end,” he said.
Vialle’s third overall gave Honda another podium and extended his own run of top-three finishes to four GPs. But it could easily have been a different story.
The Frenchman crashed in Warm-up, biting his tongue badly enough to require stitches. Worse still, the injury meant he struggled to eat during the day. He still managed third in both races.
“In the second one I only did 15 or 17 minutes and then I got just really empty,” he admitted. “My body was really tired.”
Despite that, Vialle left China only one point ahead of Adamo in their battle for fourth in the championship, with the pair also fighting to become the leading MXGP rookie.
If MXGP was another chapter in the Herlings record book, MX2 was a championship plot twist.
Farres arrived in Shanghai with the chance to take the title. McLellan arrived knowing exactly what he had to do. Win. The South African duly delivered.
Simon Laengenfelder grabbed the Fox Holeshot in race one, with Sacha Coenen behind him, while Farres and McLellan had work to do.
McLellan initially found himself behind Everts but soon moved forward, while Farres worked his way into third.
Then the Triumph teammates turned up the pressure.
With 10 minutes remaining, Farres attacked Coenen up the start straight. McLellan followed through almost immediately, and the two Triumphs were suddenly chasing down the KTMs.
McLellan eventually got Farres too.
Then, with three laps remaining, he made the decisive move on Laengenfelder.
The championship contender had done exactly what he needed to do.
Farres, meanwhile, threw away a chunk of his advantage when he spun out on the final corner, although he recovered for fourth.
McLellan took the race win – his sixth of the season – and suddenly the championship was heading for Australia. He wasn’t interested in settling for merely keeping the title alive, though.
Laengenfelder took another holeshot in race two, Farres was immediately aggressive and McLellan was once again forced to come through the pack. But this time there was a major twist.
Coenen crashed heavily through the wave section and returned to the paddock. That guaranteed one thing. The 2026 MX2 World Champion would be riding a Triumph. The only question was which one.
Farres had already moved into control at the front, while McLellan worked his way forward eventually grabbing second on lap 15. Laengenfelder, meanwhile, suffered a remarkable collapse, dropping all the way down the order.
Farres controlled the race but the final laps were anything but comfortable as Everts closed in on McLellan and on the final corner, Everts almost snatched second.
Farres held on by just over a second, with Everts less than two seconds further back.
McLellan’s fourth Grand Prix victory of the season was secured, giving Triumph its 10th GP win of 2026, its fourth 1-2 and eighth double podium.
Farres leaves Shanghai with a 48-point championship lead which is enough to put him in position to potentially wrap up the title in Saturday’s Qualifying Race in Australia.
So, after a weekend that threatened to crown him World Champion, Farres instead gets one more week to sweat. And after the way MX2 played out in Shanghai, nobody should be assuming anything.
“I wanted to take it to Australia,” said McLellan. “Not because I think I can win the championship, but because that would mean that I have done a good weekend, and I have.”
Farres, meanwhile, knows exactly what is at stake. “I really wanted to win and I pushed for it,” he said.
Shanghai delivered two very different kinds of championship drama.
In MXGP, Herlings continues to rewrite the record books while Febvre gets closer to doing something that has become increasingly rare – making him sweat.
In MX2, Triumph is guaranteed the title but its two riders have one final round to decide who gets to take it home.
