Well, what a championship we are seeing played out in the MXGP class in 2025. We have one of the veterans and best riders from the last decade, Romain Febvre, or the Kawasaki factory team, fighting to retain the red plate and trying to grab his second World Motocross Championship. In the other corner, we have the rookie, a teenager in Lucas Coenen of the Red Bull KTM factory team.

It is rather amazing how much this season mirrors that of 2015, the year the Frenchman won his first and only World title. The season started with us all looking forward to the American champion taking on our GP great, Ryan Villopoto vs Antonio Cairoli, two of the all-time greats of the sport, but what we ended up getting was one injury after another, Cairoli and Villopoto going out and the same happening to Max Nagl, who held the series points lead when he also disappeared in the back of an ambulance.

Now, in 2025, we have nearly the same situation, with us all looking forward to two five-time World champions, and two other legends of the sport, Tim Gajser and Jeffrey Herlings going head-to-head. Of course, Gajser held a big points lead, similar to that of Nagl in 2015 and like Nagl, the Slovenian exited the championship in an ambulance. Herlings did the same, and we were again left with Febvre holding the fort and the points lead.

What Febvre maybe hadn’t expected was a rookie, nearly half his age, taking on the challenge. In 2015, it was Febvre who was the MXGP rookie, coming off finishing third in the 2014 MX2 championship.

Who ends up winning this 2025 MXGP championship will be a champion we all want. Febvre, because he so much deserves at least one more title in the 450 class and he can join his other French double World champions in J. M. Bayle, Frederic Bolley, Marvin Musquin, Mickeal Pichon, Sebastien Tortelli and Tom Vialle.

Of course, with Coenen, would we not only get another MXGP rookie winning the title, but we would get a Belgian World champion, the first in nearly 20 years. What that might do for the sport in Belgium is huge and for many of us, who love the history of the sport, we are desperate to see a Belgian again standing tall and on top of a World Motocross championship points standing.

Whoever wins, he will be a great champion for the sport, one, trying to double up his own tally and that of the proud French motocross nation and another, trying to return his country to the rightful place on top of the motocross World.

Pascal Hauiquert image