It was a great weekend for Levi Townley racing the Junior World Championships at Heerde last month as despite picking up a wrist injury just before the event it didn’t stop him winning the 85cc class and becoming Junior World Champion. A proud moment for the family but the hard work won’t stop there.
Both Levi and Ben told us the plan is to come and race in Europe and the EMX125 class in the future. We still need to wait and see it it’ll happen as soon as 2025 or if they’ll decide to wait another year before making the move but it’ll be cool to see a Townley race in the GP paddock once again.
“Yeah, that’s the plan (to step up to the 125cc). We’ll just see how my growth goes and it’s not a rush to get up the bikes, we’ll just take it off my growth and if I do grow, we’ll probably come race EMX when I’m on a 125cc and that’ll probably be the plan if it’s available. I think the EMX is a great program and I think I could get a lot out of it if I came and raced”. Levi told GateDrop.com.Â
“Yeah (racing EMX is the plan), it is such a good category for the reason I just said, it’s great. The standard is very high in speed and the competition. And then obviously all of the conditions you ride so you get a lot of experience”, Ben commented.Â
We must not also forget Levi’s younger brother, Jagger who was one of the youngest, if not the youngest rider in the EMX85 class at Heerde. Just to qualify was an achievement in itself. Whilst Jagger won’t be moving up to an 125cc just yet he could still join his Brother in Europe and race the competitive 85cc classes in the likes of the Netherlands and Germany.
When they do make the move to Europe it could be quite similar to the early days of the Lawrence Brothers. Albeit when Hunter made the move he was straight into the EMX250 class but Jett was quietly going about his business on the 85cc whilst Hunter was getting all the attention. By the end of their European adventure they were both racing in the GP paddock with Hunter contesting MX2 and Jett racing EMX250.
It was actually Ben Townley who recommended the Lawrence Brothers to Jean Jacques Luisetti who was the team owner of the Kawasaki MX2 Racing Team at the time.
We’ll have to wait and see if it’ll happen in 2025 but it’ll be something to look forward to and both Townley’s clearly have talent and if they work hard the future could be very bright. There will most likely be plenty of interested teams looking to snap up the pair!
