Ken Roczen gave his view on the lack of full gates in MXGP, as emphasized last weekend in China and again next week for the title decider in Australia.
The former German MX2 world champ gave his view on the issue in conversation with Adam Cianciarulo and Justin Brayton who asked why there isn’t full gates every week:
“Why? Because you got to pay to race. You got to pay a lot of money to go racing. I don’t think anybody, especially in Europe, has any money to do that. You know what I mean? That’s what I was talking about. I mean, I over-exaggerated with 13 guys. But like, you see a 40-man gate and like barely half of it is full. It just, it looks lame. It’s sad, man… it’s just not the same. I would probably much rather, I enjoy watching the GPs, but like, you know, there’s nothing better than even at a local, I don’t know, regional qualifier, you want to see a 40-man gate, right? It’s just, it’s odd to look at, man.”
In our just published exclusive interview with David Luongo, the Infront Moto Racing CEO gave his view on the entries issue and said:
“The pyramid system we put in place is also playing a game in the number of entries. I believe it is also important to talk about reality and not impression. For sure when we go overseas, far South Europe or far East Europe, the number of riders is decreasing, it has always been the case. This year, the number of riders in MX2 decreased a bit compared to last year, but some riders went into MXGP class and the next generation of riders of the MX2 category will come from EMX250 next year.
“About the general number of riders participation, I have to say that it increased during the past 3 years. I want to remind that during the Covid time, we put in place a championship for all the categories, which allowed the riders, the teams, the mechanics, the media, to continue to have activities and to keep their work. Thanks to this, we were able to restart after Covid with a strong lineup that continued to increase. For example, from 2022 to 2024 we went from 538 riders participating into the MXGP category to 613 in 2024 (I talk about the total amount of riders that participated to the races), in MX2 from 482 to 585, in EMX250 from 455 riders to 457, and in EMX125 from 560 to an impressive 663. Those numbers are official and are not linked with emotion.
“Here again, our main target is to create a system where the best talents and most promising riders will have professional structure to reach the MXGP category as the pinnacle of the sport. In EMX125, we have most of the time two groups of riders and those kids will be the talent of tomorrow. Then when you arrive in MX2 and MXGP, we want to focus on quality riders. When you arrive to the top of the world with the MXGP, you cannot deal with a 40 lineup riders which will be this level. We believe 25/30 would be a great number to reach.”
