Desalle breaks the KTM streak to win Russian MXGP!

Clement Desalle backed up an excellent first moto win with a smart second as he followed Jeffrey Herlings home to win his first GP of the season.

It was the first win for any manufacturer not named KTM this season with the hard pack track mixing things up just a little in the results and allowing the hard track specialists to give the KTM duo a little competition.

Desalle commented: “It’s really nice, I am really happy I am the first one to win a GP and not the orange guys. I had a really good day and it was really nice.”

Herlings was philosophical on us second overall saying, “this was definitely not one of my favourite tracks, the hard concrete tracks I am not the best at but if you look at Arco and this they are the two most difficult on the calendar I would say and we pulled off a win and a second.”

While Cairoli said, “the first moto was ok, we had a good battle with Jeffrey, a lot of close racing. The track was very difficult for me, really hard and slippery so I am happy with the podium.”

The second moto was all Jeffrey Herlings who controlled the race despite a persistent Desalle keeping him honest. Cairoli crashed while pressuring Gajser for third and settled for fifth and that was good enough for third overall but the lost another seven points to Herlings in the championship and is now 23 back of the dutchman.