The wintery South African morning frost gave way to cloudless skies and beautiful sunshine for the first day of action at the MXGP of South Africa, as the Terra Topia MX Track to the north of Johannesburg welcomed an enthusiastic crowd of fans, starved of live MXGP action for 18 years and determined to see every wheel turn on the spectacular circuit!
The elevation of just under 1,400m (approx. 4,500 ft) would prove to be a factor for engine performance, especially in the MX2 class, but the revamped layout, at a venue which hosted a domestic championship race six months ago, got universal acclaim from the riders with some big jumps and fast sections which also proved popular with the fans!
In MXGP, a blistering start helped Lucas Coenen take his fifth Qualifying Race win of the season to increase his points lead for Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, but he was chased hard all the way by reigning World Champion Romain Febvre, whose Kawasaki Racing Team MXGP teammate Pauls Jonass made it a great day for the squad with his best finish of the year in third!
The other defending World Champion, Simon Längenfelder, incredibly took his first Qualifying Race win for over a full calendar year for Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, making the most of a great start, while Guillem Farres and home hero Camden McLellan made it a 2-3 for the Triumph Racing Factory Team after fighting through the pack to get there!
With a wide and spectacular track, the racing kept the fans glued to the action, and it will only get better tomorrow as the altitude and the longer races test the riders to their limits! The MXGP of South Africa is delivering all it promised and more!
Head Photo: Lucas Coenen; Top Photo: MXGP Start South Africa 2026
The riders didn’t take long to get the long circuit mastered and knock their lap times down, and right at the end of Free Practice it was Jeffrey Herlings who set the top time for Honda HRC Petronas, outpacing Tim Gajser of Monster Energy Yamaha Factory MXGP by a quarter of a second, with Lucas Coenen third.
In Time Practice, the session that counted for the Qualifying Race gate picks, it was Coenen who got his late run perfect to go top by just 0.115 of a second over Gajser, with Romain Febvre in third ahead of Herlings and Romain’s Kawasaki Racing Team MXGP teammate Pauls Jonass.
For some reason, Championship contender Herlings gambled on taking the far outside gate for the start of the Qualifying Race, while the three with better gate choices all went near the centre. With Gabriel SS24 KTM rider Oriol Oliver next to him, the gamble did not pay off as the Spaniard gated well and would not let the Dutchman get around him, leaving Coenen to grab the Holeshot ahead of Febvre and South-African born Calvin Vlaanderen, in special kit with the national sporting colours for the Red Bull Ducati Factory MXGP Team, initially in third!
Vlaanderen stumbled in the second corner, allowing Jonass and Honda HRC Petronas rider Tom Vialle to get past him, while Herlings went through the first timing beam in twelfth position! Gajser held sixth ahead of Honda HRC Petronas’ Ruben Fernandez, the second Red Bull KTM Factory Racing machine of Andrea Adamo, and the Venrooy Racing KTM of Rick Elzinga!
Herlings made progress to get into the points by the end of the first lap, and then passed Elzinga through a waved section at the end of lap two. Maxime Renaux would follow him past Elzinga to get into the top ten for Monster Energy Yamaha Factory MXGP, then Fernandez crashed on lap three to drop to twelfth! One more lap would go by before Herlings could advance to seventh at the expense of Adamo.
Coenen was setting fast laps at the front, but Febvre was keeping him in sight! The young Belgian could not relax as the French veteran pressed on behind him, sometimes close enough to feel the roost from the back wheel! Jonass, Vialle, and Vlaanderen held firm in third to fifth positions, the Kawasaki man matching his best result for the team, from Cozar in Spain at last year’s second round! Similarly, the Ducati rider, so pumped to be racing in front of his first ever true home crowd, took his best Qualifying result yet for the team, and his own best since last year’s final round in Australia.
With three laps to go, Gajser dropped his bike in the heavy left-handed corner before the biggest jump on the track, and Herlings, Adamo, and Renaux gratefully all moved up at his expense to finish in sixth to eighth positions. Oliver also went missing entirely at the same time, allowing Fernandez to claim the final point in tenth, not far behind Gajser. Elzinga took his best finish yet in the MXGP class, just outside the points in eleventh.
However, Coenen proved to be uncatchable in collecting his 23rd career Qualifying Race win, and gain five further points on “The Bullet” to leave him 62 ahead in the Championship. He will be carrying the red plate through to the next round in England!
The rest will hope for a better start, especially Herlings, to see if they can get an advantage over the Belgian tomorrow! Not one to be missed on this awesome circuit!
Lucas Coenen: “It was a good one. I took a good start, me and Romain were battling for the first corners, and I managed to take the lead, and led every single lap. I tried not to make any mistake, just smooth, and I think the riding was good. Let’s see tomorrow how the track is, and let’s go.”
Romain Febvre: “I had a good start, so I was happy about that, and then just found a good pace with Lucas. I had some good lines also, I could figure out some things on the track, so it was pretty good. Somehow it’s not so physical, we finished the race and it feels like we have still more in the tank. Hopefully the track will develop a little bit more tomorrow to get some more lines, and then hopefully two good races tomorrow and put on a show.”
Pauls Jonass: “It was good, finally got a really good start. Maybe I shut off a bit early because I think I could have gone with them, but I felt good. Romain and Lucas were a bit faster, but I felt good in third place, tried to keep the laps consistent, and felt good on the bike. The team worked really hard, and together we put in some effort to be here, so it’s nice to be on the podium, and hopefully we can do the same tomorrow. I think it shows the effort and the configuration we have on the bike, it’s altitude so you need the power here, and the team has done a really good job.”
1. Romain Febvre; 2. Pauls Jonass
MXGP – Qualifying Race Classification: 1. Lucas Coenen (BEL, KTM), 24:59.212; 2. Romain Febvre (FRA, Kawasaki), +0:04.335; 3. Pauls Jonass (LAT, Kawasaki), +0:19.979; 4. Tom Vialle (FRA, Honda), +0:22.984; 5. Calvin Vlaanderen (NED, Ducati), +0:26.155; 6. Jeffrey Herlings (NED, Honda), +0:26.984; 7. Andrea Adamo (ITA, KTM), +0:37.232; 8. Maxime Renaux (FRA, Yamaha), +0:39.772; 9. Tim Gajser (SLO, Yamaha), +0:45.437; 10. Ruben Fernandez (ESP, Honda), +0:57.224
MXGP – World Championship Classification: 1. Lucas Coenen (BEL, KTM), 516 points; 2. Jeffrey Herlings (NED, HON), 454 p.; 3. Romain Febvre (FRA, KAW), 403 p.; 4. Tim Gajser (SLO, YAM), 373 p.; 5. Maxime Renaux (FRA, YAM), 337 p.; 6. Andrea Adamo (ITA, KTM), 317 p.; 7. Ruben Fernandez (ESP, HON), 305 p.; 8. Kay de Wolf (NED, HUS), 273 p.; 9. Tom Vialle (FRA, HON), 272 p.; 10. Pauls Jonass (LAT, KAW), 242 p.;
Simon Längenfelder
Reigning World Champion Simon Längenfelder set the top time in Free Practice, with the Monster Energy Yamaha Factory MX2 pairing of Janis Reisulis and Karlis Reisulis just a fraction behind him.
The Time Practice session was breath-taking, as the track dried rapidly and got quicker right to the finish. In the end it was Janis Reisulis who stole the first gate pick by 36 thousandths of a second from Nestaan Husqvarna Factory Racing rider Liam Everts! Guillem Farres took third ahead of Längenfelder and his fellow Red Bull KTM Factory Racing pilot Sacha Coenen.
Längenfelder bolted out of the start gate the fastest to grab the Holeshot ahead of the Ošicka KTM of Julius Mikula, while Janis Reisulis stayed close enough to power around the Czech rider to claim second early on. The two Triumph factory racers were initially outside the top five, behind Karlis Reisulis, but fought hard to get around the second Latvian, and Mikula, to sit in third and fourth by the end of the first full lap!
Coenen, meanwhile, did not get a good drive off the start and was briefly outside the top ten, fighting his way into eighth behind Everts as they started lap two. Jens Walvoort on the SB Racing KTM and Maxime Grau for Maddii Racing Honda ABF Italia held ninth and tenth.
By lap three, both Karlis Reisulis and Everts had worked their way around Mikula, although Everts had to have a second bite of the cherry as the brave Czech rider passed the Husqvarna back by launching over the biggest triple jump despite the Belgian’s best efforts to block him! Sadly for Mikula, he made a mistake on the very next jump and had to yield sixth place, then seventh to Coenen a lap later.
On lap four, Farres blazed past Janis Reisulis to take second over a rhythm section in front of the VIP area, certainly making those tickets worth the asking price! He started to close in on Längenfelder, but the German stayed cool and would not be forced into a mistake. Janis held third for most of the race, while McLellan took his time to reel him in, despite the urgent calls of the crowd!
Mikula sadly dropped out of the race completely on lap seven of twelve, lifting Valerio Lata into the points, as he finished tenth for Honda HRC Petronas. Grau got past Walvoort at half distance as the two top privateers finished eighth and ninth, a great race for the Frenchman who scored his first Saturday points of the season with his career best Qualifying result!
Sacha Coenen could not make any further progress from seventh in an unusually subdued race for the red plate holder. Everts got close to Karlis Reisulis but could not relieve the Yamaha man of fifth place, but his brother did get passed by McLellan with four laps to go, putting the Johannesburg native into the top three in his first Qualifying Race on home soil!
Längenfelder held on to take his first Qualifying Race win as a World Champion, his first since the British GP in June last year, giving him a further two points advantage over McLellan in their battle for third in the standings. Farres’ second place puts him five points closer to Coenen at the top of the table, making it a 27-point gap between them heading into tomorrow’s GP races!
There is all to play for in the first GP races of the second half of the season tomorrow, and both MXGP and MX2 should dazzle the South African fans with their racing on the spectacular Terra Topia track! Don’t miss a wheel turn, join us tomorrow!
Simon Langenfelder: “It was cool. I like those big tracks, and somehow I start liking overseas races because it brings everyone a bit together. So it’s been nice to win it. We’ve had some bad runs, and we’ve been taking some steps and I guess they start to show now a little bit. Super happy. We’ll have great races tomorrow.”
MX2 – Qualifying Race Classification: 1. Simon Längenfelder (GER, KTM), 25:26.339; 2. Guillem Farres (ESP, Triumph), +0:06.577; 3. Camden Mc Lellan (RSA, Triumph), +0:14.976; 4. Janis Martins Reisulis (LAT, Yamaha), +0:15.910; 5. Karlis Alberts Reisulis (LAT, Yamaha), +0:23.784; 6. Liam Everts (BEL, Husqvarna), +0:25.325; 7. Sacha Coenen (BEL, KTM), +0:29.992; 8. Maxime Grau (FRA, Honda), +0:48.831; 9. Jens Walvoort (NED, KTM), +0:55.195; 10. Valerio Lata (ITA, Honda), +0:57.489
MX2 – World Championship Classification: 1. Sacha Coenen (BEL, KTM), 481 points; 2. Guillem Farres (ESP, TRI), 454 p.; 3. Simon Längenfelder (GER, KTM), 425 p.; 4. Camden Mc Lellan (RSA, TRI), 421 p.; 5. Liam Everts (BEL, HUS), 402 p.; 6. Janis Martins Reisulis (LAT, YAM), 362 p.; 7. Mathis Valin (FRA, KAW), 352 p.; 8. Karlis Alberts Reisulis (LAT, YAM), 279 p.; 9. Valerio Lata (ITA, HON), 257 p.; 10. Kay Karssemakers (NED, KAW), 205 p.
1.Guillem Farres; 2. Camden Mc Lellan
All the photos from the MXGP of South Africa will be available HERE.
You can find the complete results HERE.
TIMETABLE
SUNDAY: 09:25 MX2 Warm-up, 09:45 MXGP Warm-up, 11:15 MX2 Race 1, 12:15 MXGP Race 1, 14:10 MX2 Race 2, 15:10 MXGP Race 2.
LINKS
