A sharply contested 11th round of the FIM Motocross World Championship saw Monster Energy Yamaha Factory MXGP’s duo of Jeremy Seewer and Gautier Paulin post positive points. Not feeling 100%, Seewer still came close to a podium finish with his 6-3 scorecard for fourth overall, while Paulin finished twice seventh for seventh overall.
Despite the rainfall leading into the third and final stop in Mantova, the track was drier, flatter and faster than the previous two rounds. Most of the riders were running more or less the same pace, which placed extreme importance on a good start.
After a mid-pack start in Race 1, Seewer put in a phenomenal opening lap to move up into sixth from outside of the top-15. With all of the riders evenly matched in speed, passing proved incredibly difficult. Even the slightest mistake was costly. The ‘91’ capitalised on others’ errors to move up into fourth but was shuffled back to sixth when he made an error of his own.
Faced with the same struggle of passing other riders running a similar lap-time, Paulin had the pace of the leaders but could only fight back to seventh.
In the final race of the day, both Seewer and Paulin got off to much better starts. Seewer made up the top-five while Paulin emerged from the turn in eighth. Jorge Prado fell from the lead, which bumped both riders up a position on the opening lap.
Again, there was not a lot separating the top-five riders as they navigated the one-lined course like slot cars. Seewer waited for a chance to move up into third and when the opportunity arose on the final lap, he took it with both hands.
As the ‘91’ soared to his 11th top-three race finish of the season, Paulin felt he could have improved his bike’s handling with better suspension settings. He ended up finishing seventh.
Seewer has strengthened his position inside the top-three in the Championship Standings while Paulin has moved up to seventh. The next round of the FIM Motocross World Championship will occur on Sunday 11th October in Madrid, Spain.
Jeremy Seewer
4th MXGP of Europe, 35-points
2nd MXGP Championship Standings, 369-points
“Honestly, my body wasn’t feeling the best today. It wasn’t my best day so I feel like I did well. Okay, I lost some points in the first one, but luckily, I didn’t crash, didn’t make any big mistakes. Could have finished fourth and that would have put me on the podium, but anyway, I know what I have and now my main focus is to regroup and to try to get my body back to normal. I think I still have good speed, a good bike and good crew to bounce back and be up front. It was still a solid day, solid points and many races still to go. It’s still a long season and now it’s starting to get really tough for everybody. We are still looking good, we will regroup and be ready to bounce back in Spain.”
Gautier Paulin
7th MXGP of Europe, 28-points
7th MXGP Championship Standings, 286-points
“My speed was really good today. I had the third best lap time and when I race my speed is really good, I can see it. I had two bad starts today, and that is really the story of my weekend. Two bad starts and it was really hard to come back. In the first moto I came from 15th back to seventh, which was pretty good. The second moto was a bit harder, I got like a fake rhythm, and my suspension was a bit of a pain. It was really hard to pass and to make the difference today. I really need to work on my start to be more consistent going into Spain.”
