Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~ MOTOCROSS 250cc MX Grand Prix history period, and there can be no doubt that we must first consider the records of Joel Robert. The six-time World Champion stands alone in the table of GP winners, his 50 trophies coming over a nine-year period in which he never completed a season with less than three victories. The world was very different in the '60s and early '70s, and so were the requirements of a motocross Wbrld Champion. There were no thoughts of riding consistently for points, it was ~ (Left) The 250cc class has evolved into what many regard to be the premier class in GP MX racing. (Right) Jim Pomeroy was the first American to win a motocross GP, the 250cc Belgian GP in 1975. (Below) Danny LaPorte gave the U.S. its first World Championship MX title in 1982, also in the 250cc class. • e Irst By Alex Hodgkinson lthough. many still believe the 500cc class is the prestige category of Grand Prix motocross after its 40 illustrious· years of existence which were summlnized in Cycle News earlier this year, the motocross commission of the FIM has decided in their infinite wisdom that starting in 1993 the World Championship 250cc MX Series will be officially deemed the "premier" class of competition. Already this year the Japanese manufacturers have switched their major attention to the 250s, and with the upcoming Unadilla Grand Prix in mind, we now present- a statistical survey of the class to date. The statistics in this story are complete up to and including the Italian GP in May, the fourth round of the 1992 World Championship. Since then the GPs of England, Ireland and Venezuela win have been run before the teams travel· to New York State for the 435th FIM World Championship MX event for machines between 176 and 250cc. The first such race was held at the Bout du Monde circuit in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland, on May 5, 1957. It was in fact the support race to the first-ever "World" Championship 500cc GP and the race for "Petite Cylindres" (little cylinders) was not even designated as being of "European Championship" status, having the title of "Silver Medal of the FIM" in it's first year of competition. That first 250cc title went to Fritz Betzlbacher of Germany on the factory Maico after nine rounds in seven different European countries, and the following year's competition, won by the Czech Jaromir Cizek on a Jawa, was upgraded to the title of "Coupe d' Europe" as seven of the 12 rounds continued to be run in the support program of the 500cc GPs. A Even in 1959, when Rolf Tibblin of Sweden on the Husqvarna won the first 250cc series to actually carry the title of "European championship" after a 13-round schedule, the Austrian and Luxembourg rounds were run as support races, but the category, which only· two years before had been considered a joke compared with the "real machines" of the 500cc class, was now in a position to stand on its own two feet. Never again would the 250s be includ~d as a sideshow at a 500cc GP! The first "World" championship was run in 1962 as Torsten Hallman reversed the trend of the first half of the season to defeat the BSAs of Jeff Smith and Arthur Lampkin which were to represent the final four-stroke challenge in the category. In one of those wonderful "if only" hypotheses, however, one has to wonder what would have happened if Dave Bickers and Greeves, the 1960/61 championship-winning partnership, had not boycotted the series as a protest against the lamentably low travel allowance and prize money; in his one appearance of 1962 at the British GP Bickers had delivered a devastating defeat to Hallman in both motos. 18 riders from 7 countries (including Poland!) shared the 58 victories in the pre-"World" status events which, in the absence of any other major championship for the category, are considered in this review to be of equal distinction: in fact, more manufacturers contested those early events than have ever lined up since 1962. When Donny Schmit won this year's Italian GP, just two days short of 35 years after that first event in Geneva, he became the 97th man, and 16th American, to enter the record books as a 250cc MX GP winner. This review is concerned with the absolute heights of excellence in that ears win or bust with the title to be decided by the seven best overall performances of the season. Between his first GP win on a c:z in the suburbs of Brussels on the last Sunday of April 1964 and his final success at Kishiney in Moldavia on . June 18, 1972 on the works Suzuki, Robert contested 109 GPs. He won 50 of them, was second in 21 and third in two. He DNF at least one moto of all but four of the rest! Not that the bike always quit on him completely, for the extrovert Belgian once

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