Cooler heads have prevailed, and the 2016 FIM Motocross World Championship will not use qualifying points to determine event winners.
PHOTO BY SCOTT ROUSSEAU.
The Motocross Grand Prix Commission, composed of Youthstream President Giuseppe Luongo, Tony Skillington, Director of the CMS/FIM, and Takanao Tsubouchi, Motorcycle Sport Manufacturers’ Association (MSMA) Secretary General, have unanimously reversed a prior decision regarding how MXGP and MX2 winners are determined at World Championship events that may have proved to be confusing at best.
After the Motocross of Nations in Ernée, France, on September 28, the series announced that in 2016 it would include points earned in the Saturday qualifying races for the MXGP and MX2 classes to not only decide the starting positions for Sunday’s GP motos but also to determine the overall outcome of the classes themselves.
The plan was to award points as follows: first place-5 points; second place-4 points; third place-3 points; fourth place-2 points; and fifth place-1 point. These points would carry over into the following day’s two-moto format, and the overall winner of the event would be be the rider who gained the highest number of points from the Qualifying Race, Moto 1 and Moto 2, irrespective of the number of races he finished. The intent was to place a higher priority on qualifying, but the system met with a lot of static from teams and fans who felt that tying the qualifying points to the actual motos would not be a fair representation of a rider’s performance on Sunday, and it had the potential to make it more difficult for fans to easily decipher the overall winner of an event based upon GP moto finishes, the way it has been for almost five decades.
Fortunately, GP racers and fans will not need to concern themselves with the addition of qualifying points to the system, as the Grand Prix Commisssion has reverted back to the same qualifying procedure (without the awarding of any points) and the points scoring system for the two races, Moto 1 and Moto 2, as 2015.
Smart move, we say. After all, why mess with a good thing when FIM World Championship Motocross just enjoyed one of its most successful seasons, in terms of worldwide fan interest, in recent years? This was especially true in America, where Ryan Villopoto’s decision to contest the Grands Prix in the final year of his career, however unsuccessful, shined the American spotlight on the series, which also benefited from American Thomas Covington’s overall win the MX2 class at the GP of Leon in Mexico, and from solid fan support at the series finale Monster Energy MXGP of the USA at Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, California.
No need to reinvent the wheel. Just let it roll.
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