Australasian Dirt Bike — January 2018

84 | JANUARY 2018 http://www.adbmag.com.au

FACTORYTESTIREDBULLKTM

The TC222 machine was polar opposite to JH84’s KTM Herlings’ bike is set up for wider lines and blasting out

W

hat a season it was

for Red Bull KTM

Factory Racing. The

Austrian

manufacturer

claimed both the

MXGP and MX2

titles with Antonio Cairoli and Pauls Jonass,

and proved that it is well and truly back on

top by picking up both manufacturers’ world

championships. To help celebrate its success

and to share the moment, I had the

opportunity to ride all KTM Factory machines

in the Dutch sand of Veldhoven, just days

after the final MXGP round in France where

Jeffrey Herlings was joint winner.

Twenty seventeen was time for Herlings to

move into MXGP after seven years with Kato

an MX2 rider. Under normal circumstances

he would have moved ‘next door’ to the

Claudio De Carli side of the race tent but

Herlings preferred to stay with the team he

knew and worked so well with, which meant

there was a 450SX-F in the MX2 awning,

something of a logistical nightmare for

technical director Dirk Gruebel.

When the season fired into life with the

internationals, Cairoli and Herlings’ bikes

were very similar, so too was their speed. But

then Herlings crashed and broke his hand,

causing something of a set-back that changed

the outcome of the season as well as the bikes.

WORDS // PAUL MALIN PHOTOS // RED BULL KTM

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PAUL MALIN RIDES THE CREAM OF

KTM’s WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CROP