The 2023 Motocross World Championship season ended in the best possible way for the Pierer Mobility Group, who clinched both world titles.
For Andrea Adamo, his MX2 World Championship triumph was entirely unexpected. The Italian was signed by KTM to partner Liam Everts (son of 10-times World Champion Stefan Everts and grandson of three-times World Champion Harri Everts) in the factory Red Bull-backed MX2 team for the 2023 season. Neither Adamo nor Everts had won a Grand Prix before this year, and so it was expected to be a building year for the pair. But, instead, the two were the primary title contenders by the time MXGP arrived its penultimate round of the season at the MXGP of Italy at the historic Maggiora.
On home soil, Adamo was able to clinch, partly thanks to a crash by Everts in the second moto which, in the end, would cost him any chance at a World Championship medal at the season-ending MXGP of Great Britain at Matterley Basin, which took place one week after the Maggiora race.
The Italian’s championship victory marked the first for an Italian in any class of Grand Prix motocross since 2017, when Antonio Cairoli - also on Red Bull KTM - won his seventh MXGP title and ninth crown in all. It was also Cairoli, in 2007, who won Italy’s last MX2 title.
Adamo’s title was the 15th for the KTM 250 SX-F, which is the most successful motorcycle in the Austrian brand’s arsenal. Since 2009, when Marvin Musquin won his first World Championship, the 250 SX-F has won the MX2 world title in 2010 (Musquin), 2011 (Ken Roczen), 2012 (Jeffrey Herlings), 2013 (Herlings), 2014 (Jordi Tixier), 2016 (Herlings), 2017 (Pauls Jonass), 2018 (Jorge Prado), 2019 (Prado), 2020 (Tom Vialle), 2022 (Vialle), and finally 2023 with Adamo.
(The only two titles not won by KTM in that time were by now-five-times World Champion Tim Gajser and Honda in 2015, and by Maxime Renaux and Yamaha in 2021.)
In the MXGP class, KTM’s 2018 and 2019 MX2 winner Jorge Prado clinched his first premier class crown. It was historic for two reasons, beyond being Prado’s first title. Firstly, it was the first Motocross World Championship title for GasGas (whose MC450F is essentially a KTM 450 SX-F with red plastics); and it was the first MXGP World Championship title for Spain, which had won at the highest level in almost all major motorcycle disciplines (countless names in motorcycle Grand Prix, those such as Josep Garcia in enduro, Toni Bou in trials, Carlos Checa and Alvaro Bautista in WorldSBK, David Checa in endurance) bar motocross until Prado’s 2023 success.
In just over one week, both Adamo and Prado will head to Ernee in France for the 2023 Motocross of Nations (7-8 October).
Adamo’s Team Italy was hit with the news this week that its MXGP-class rider, Prado’s GasGas MXGP teammate Mattia Guadagnini (who won the 2021 MXoN on home soil for Italy alongside Cairoli and Alessandro Lupino), will be out of action for the Nations. Guadagnini will be replaced in the MX1 class by Italy’s original MX Open-class rider, Alberto Forato, whose place in the Open class will be taken by 2023 EMX250 Champion Andrea Bonacorsi.
For Prado’s Team Spain, things are more simple. The new MXGP World Champion will be partnered by HRC’s Ruben Fernandez, who won the first premier class MXGP of the 2023 season in Argentina, and David Braceras, who will cover the MX2 duties.
Images courtesy of KTM/Ray Archer, GasGas/Juan Pablo Acevedo.
