MXGP - The four men

It isn’t hard to look at the last few months of the MXGP championship and wonder what has happened. Until now we have had five men with GP victories, Max Nagl, Ryan Villopoto, Antonio Cairoli, Gautier Paulin and Romain Febvre. Five men from 10 GPs, that is pretty impressive.

Of those five men one is out with injury and two are carrying injury. The other two are Frenchmen Paulin and Febvre and both are still in contention for this year’s MXGP championship. Paulin is hanging on by the grit of his teeth as he lays some 45 points behind red plate owner Febvre. The two Frenchmen bookmark Nagl, and Cairoli, the two friends that has won five of the 10 GP’s between them, but it’s Febvre with victories in France, Italy and Germany that is the man of the moment, and in many ways the current favorite to win the 2015 MXGP championship.

American Villopoto is long gone, seemingly disappeared from the world of motocross, nobody knows where he is or if he will come back. The best American rider from the current era sent into possible retirement after being hammered time and time again by the best motocross riders in the world. It wasn’t an easy couple of months of Villopoto, but he did hang in there and fight hard right up until the very end. Looking for answered that were possibly not there.

Cairoli the best rider of his era hasn’t had a season he will look back on with a smile. It’s been the toughest defense of any championship he has ridden. At times totally outclassed by riders like Nagl and Febvre, but Cairoli is a great and great riders don’t just lay down and hide, they stay and fight until the very end and that is just what the Italian is doing. His current position is a rider racing with a serious arm injury, but racing and trying to gain as many points as possible. These are the performances that make Cairoli the best of the best, no matter the outcome in 2015.

What of Nagl, the shining light in the early part of the season he is now in deep trouble with a busted ankle. Will he race in Sweden? It isn’t 100% clear, and if he does race he will have to do a Cairoli and hang in there, hoping for something out of nothing. As he said himself last week, riding with pain is the least he can do to keep his championship hopes alive.

And Paulin, the rider who needs to find something special, something like his MXoN moto victories of past seasons. His form on the HRC bike hasn’t been like his performances in 2014, but he has shown signs of coming good. The former BMX world champion will need to start winning GP’s and more than just a couple to find himself in contention in those final few rounds.

But as mentioned the man at the very top is Febvre, his resolve as an MXGP rookie has been nothing short of astonishing and his triple treat in the last month is something nobody could have expected. Going into Sweden, Latvia and Lommel the Yamaha Factory rider has the edge on his rivals and who knows, maybe he can give Yamaha their first world championship since 2009 when that man Cairoli as an MX1/MXGP rookie won his last title on the blue machines.