PRADO LIGHTS UP MXGP TITLE FIGHT

How good is the rapid-fire final few rounds of the 2024 FIM MXGP World Championship shaping up to be?! Admittedly, given that KTM’s Jeffrey Herlings has slipped to 53 points behind the red plate of Honda’s Tim Gajser, another title win now looks like a long shot for him. But the ding-dong contest for the No.1 plate is set to go right down to the wire between Gajser and reigning champ, GASGAS’s Jorge Prado.

After racking up his 47^th career victory with a stunning 3-1 performance last weekend in Türkiye, at Round 18 of the MXGP’s 20-round series (including the Spaniard’s 15^th holeshot!), Prado narrowed Gajser’s lead to just 14 points (the gap had been as large as 24 points a few rounds prior) as they head into this weekend’s penultimate round in Shanghai, China – which, as an all-new venue for the championship, is unchartered territory for all the teams and riders.

This will be the second time the World Championship returns to China (the first was a hot and humid event in 2019, when it was the final round of the series and both MXGP and MX2 had already seen their champions crowned). Now, five years on, the situation is a very different one for the China GP which, rather curiously, is called “The Oriental Beauty Valley MXGP of China”.

AUSSIES IN THE CHINA MIX

In China this weekend, the MXGP class will be joined by Australia’s Todd Waters, who previously raced in MXGP and finished ninth in the series in 2015. Waters lines up in China for the Raceline Husqvarna Racing Team, while Kirk Gibbs, twice a member of the Australian MXoN team, will ride for the GASGAS Racing Team, also making the slightly shorter journey than the European riders have. We hope the Aussie boys have a cracker of a weekend in Shanghai.