JEFFREY HERLINGS CROWNED DUTCH MX2 CHAMPION

The talented young Dutch teenager who currently leads the MX2 World Championship easily won both MX2 motos, even lapping all the riders up to sixth place in the opening race, which he finished with an advantage of over two minutes.

Jeffrey Herlings ride on the Dutch sand track was all the more remarkable because half way through the second moto he broke his gear shift and had to finish – and win – the race while riding only in fourth gear.

His performance quickly dispelled any lingering memories of the mud soaked last round of the world championship in the GP of Brazil, a rare occasion when Jeffrey and the other KTM factory riders did not dominate the podium places.

De Dycker successfully launches the 2013 KTM 450 SX-F in Europe
Also present at Round 6 of the Dutch championship was KTM factory rider Ken De Dycker of Belgium, who spent the weekend getting in some lap time on his brand new 2013 KTM 450 SX-F bike in its first appearance on the European circuits.

Ken has been riding in the MX1 factory team to replace Max Nagl who continues to recover from double surgery on his back earlier this year and was given the new bike as a vote of confidence from the MX1 factory team manager Claudio de Carli.

The team boss confirmed that race by race both he and the team had seen the way that de Dycker was performing both on and off the track. "Now we have given Ken the new bike to give him more confidence," de Carli said. "Ken really deserved this new factory bike. We did some tests after Brazil and everyone was very satisfied with his performance."

Ken’s very successful race weekend in fact started in Belgium at Mons on Sunday at his own national championship where he was fastest qualifier and went on to lead all three races and finish with a perfect score card on the ‘Le Bois Brulé’ sand track.

Moving across the border to the Dutch Championship on the Monday holiday, Ken also delivered a great performance on his new bike. He moved into the lead in the first moto just three laps from the start and had amassed a 15 second lead by the end of the race. De Dycker took the holeshot in the second race and again finished with a confident 15 seconds gap. He and Evgeny Bobryshev however were both penalized a minute for a yellow flag violation in the first race but De Dycker still took the overall victory.

Ken said he was very happy with his new KTM 450 SX-F. Up to now, as the team’s replacement rider, he has been riding an older version of the factory machine. “The new bike is much better and I like it a lot,” de Dycker said. “We just have to make a few tiny adjustments but it really suits me. It’s good in the starts, it’s good on the track, it’s good everywhere. Yesterday it was very easy riding on the sand track. Today was a bit harder because there was a different field of riders.”

De Carli also said he now looked forward to Ken getting more good results on the KTM 450 SX-F. Ken's MX1 teammate, 5-times world champion Tony Cairoli rides the agile KTM 350 SX-F and currently leads the World Championship.

Ken will now return to Belgium where he will train on some hard pack tracks in preparation for the French GPs at Saint Jean d’Angely next weekend. Jeffrey will do his preparation for the hard pack French circuit at home in the Netherlands.