After Turkey, it was China’s turn for the penultimate round of the MXGP on the track of Shanghai. Due to Typhoon Bebinca, organizers had to change the weekend schedule. Instead of a two-day schedule, the event was concentrated into a single day with a short training session and two races, with a short break (one hour) in between. With humidity in the air and a temperature of over 30 degrees, it was a real challenge for our riders!
Thirteenth after the training session to discover the track and fine-tune the bike, Kevin Horgmo made a very good start in the first race and was seventh until he made a mistake; he lost a few positions but made up several over the course of the heat, including two in the last two laps to finish seventh. Only fifteenth after a crash on the opening lap of race two, Kevin was back near the top ten after four laps when another crash relegated him to fifteenth; not enough to trouble our brave Norwegian, who returned tenth across the line.
While Kevin was able to adapt to the heat and humidity, Valentin Guillod had more trouble coping with these conditions and even had physical problems before the end of the first moto; in the top ten for most of the period, he had to slow down in the final part of the race and finished thirteenth. There was not much time to recover before the second heat, and once again Valentin did his best, after an excellent start, to regain as many points as possible; fourteenth in this race, he secured the ninth position in the championship.
