Young Belgian rider, Maxime Lucas moved up to the 125cc last year after inking a deal with French team, Tech32 KTM. This year, Lucas has only contested selected EMX125 rounds and both parties have decided to part way.
It hasn’t taken Lucas long to secure another ride as the DVS TM Junior Racing have decided to snap up after he tested the machine.
Lucas will make his debut at the EMX125 series taking place at Maggiora in Italy next weekend.
We caught up with Maxime and Dirk to discuss the move.
Maxime Lucas: We have mutually decided to end the collaboration with Tech32 KTM. We have experienced many wonderful and pleasant times together, which I look back on with a warm heart. For this I am very grateful to the Tech32 team. However, I reached a point where I noticed that we were stuck and that it could not continue this way.
Around that time, I came into contact with Dirk & Ingrid from DVS Junior Racing, and Dirk suggested that I try out a TM moto. We met last weekend and did some testing. With a few minor adjustments, it actually felt good, which made it easy for me to make the switch to TM. Moreover, I feel welcome and comfortable with Dirk & Ingrid as well. For the rest of the season, I want to make up for lost ground and continue to build up so that we can end this season on a high note.
Dirk Vansummeren (team owner): Because our main rider Orel Lubis was injured and only recently went through a successful surgery, we had to replace him this season but these riders did not live up to the expectations of the level of the EMX125 series. I noticed that Maxime was not having a great time on the KTM this year with the team, the bike and everything around them did not do as they promised which made that the motivation and confidence of Maxime was far gone. I asked him about his thoughts to test our bike as soon as he would leave the French team so we did a test and both Maxime and myself were happy to see how fast Maxime was on the TM. What most people don’t know is that the handling and suspension from the TM is by far the best of all the 125 bikes on the market.
My expectations are that he finds the pleasure of racing again because that will resolve in good results. Therefor we travel to Italy next weekend just to setup his bike for Maggiora and have fun on the bike without all the comments and meanings of everyone around him. Maxime has a lot of talent and if he finds that pleasure again nice things will follow.
