Ryan Dungey and KTM dominate SMX Riders’ Cup

AMERICAN supecross champion and KTM ran away with individual and team trophies in the inaugural Supermotocross Cup at Germany’s Veltins Arena on Saturday.  

Ryan Dungey (pictured above), Jeffrey Herlings and Marvin Musquin stole the show despite MXGP world champion Tim Gasjer and Romain Febvre also taking race wins.

Gasjer was fastest in qualifying before taking the first race pretty comfortably from Ryan Dungey. The Honda rider then continued to make light work of race two, before hitting the deck in dramatic fashion, injuring his shoulder and in the process ruining his chances of the €50,000 individual purse.

Up stepped Yamaha main-man Febvre to claim race two, adding to his race one fourth place.

That made race three the decider, with Febvre in the points lead, but he followed the trend and dropped it right at the first turn, eliminating himself from a potential overall event win to off the podium.

Race three was then all about Red Bull KTM’s Dungey, who led for most of the race. Despite making a small mistake which allowed Jeffrey Herlings to take a deserved win, the overall Riders’ Cup went to the super-consistent Dungey, who had scored a fast but safe trio of second places.

KTM was always the favourite for the manufacturers’ cup, with the strongest team by some margin. And so it proved, with Dungey backed up by teammate Marvin Musquin and the determined but crash-prone (until race three) Jeffrey Herlings.

Herlings actually got better as the night went on and turned on the form in race three, rattling out the fastest laps as he took Gasjer and then Dungey for the lead.

Britain’s sole representative at the event was British motocross champion, Tommy Searle. The Kawasaki rider showed top-five potential much of the night but couldn’t quite pull off those results, ending up with a 9-8-11 scorecard.

That helped Team Kawasaki bag third on the Manufacturers’ Cup podium, behind Honda in second and winners KTM.

Around 10,000 spectators attended the half motocross/half supercross event at Veltins Aren in Gelsenkirchen.