Words By Geoff Meyer – MXLarge.com – Photos by: MXGP.com1
Team HRC rider Max Nagl continues to be the quiet achiever in the MXGP class of 2014. While names like Antonio Cairoli, Clement Desalle and Gautier Paulin have taken GP wins and headlines, the German hero has been quiet in his progress to fourth place in the series standings with 144 points. Nagl is just 14 points behind second placed Clement Desalle and 10 points behind third placed Jeremy Van Horebeek, and moving onto Bulgaria this weekend, he has every desire to close that gap.
Last weekend at the Grand Prix of Trentino he scored 4-5 results for fourth place overall and until now he has picked up four fourth places in the opening eight motos of the season. Not to mention his moto victory in Qatar. After former team-mate Antonio Cairoli of the Red Bull KTM Factory team, Nagl is the most consistent of the MXGP riders going 1-4-6-4-4-5-4-5.
What is scary for the riders ahead of him the HRC team made big progress last weekend with the bike and will head to Bulgaria with five engineers from Japan.
“The biggest positive from Italy is that we improved the bike a lot from the start. For this race we pushed even more to find a solution to the starts because you need to be up front there. Especially the first five guys, they’re gone and there is no chance to catch them in the race, so we worked to improve in this.”
“I had two good starts where I was right with the first five guys so that’s a big improvement. The team did a really good job with the bike, but all day I was struggling with the track, like it was not possible for me to turn. I could not put the bike flat in the turns because it always moved and slipped so I had the feeling I would crash, so I had to keep the bike upright and then you are really slow. I was really aggressive and pushing hard in the second race behind van Horebeek but the track was very strange and I made some mistakes and just couldn’t make that one second extra that I needed today.”
In Brazil a couple of weeks prior to Italy Nagl again showed his solid performance although he did struggle with the heat in Brazil.
“I was happy with my riding; I was smooth and had a good tactic when passing other but physically, I don’t know why but for me it was harder than Thailand. It was a strange heat today – it was hard for me to last in the race so I had to slow down to not destroy my body. I had two times a top five result – it’s ok but for sure we are pushing for the podium every time. In part it was down to the starts because if you’re not with the group then you have no chance, and also it was tough for me today so this is why it wasn’t possible to get on the podium..”
Now onto Sevlievo in Bulgaria for the next round of the MXGP Championship, where Nagl has often performed well even winning there in 2010.
