SEPANG, June 4 — The country’s leading motocross event organiser ALS Motorsports plans to include Malaysia in next year’s MXGP Championship calendar.
MXGP is a motocross championship recognised by the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) involving two-stroke motorcycles from 175cc up to 250cc or four-stroke machines from 290cc up to 450cc.
So far the race has only been organised in Europe.
ALS Motorsports manager Syamsul Bakhtiar Esa said the race, which is expected to take place around June to July, is part of the company’s effort to develop the sport in the country and take it to the international level.
“We cannot inform the (exact) location (of the race) but it is around Selangor. The calendar for the MXGP competition starts in Europe with six to seven rounds, then it is (proposed to head) to Indonesia and then have two rounds in Malaysia followed by Thailand,” he told reporters after a dialogue session with the Motorsports Association of Malaysia (MAM) and motocross activists here, today.
Syamsul Bakhtiar hoped that the proposal would get a good response from the government and sports activists in the country.
On the dialogue session organised by ALS today, he said it was to ensure that all races organised by motorsport activists in the country were regulated, adding that this was very important for the development of the country’s riders.
“Recently, many of the races organised have not been recognised, there is no insurance coverage, coupled with rider and track safety issues as well as no rider inspection, so our purpose of having this dialogue session is to solve the problem at the grassroots level.
“The activists and organisers were able to think it over and agree that there would be no more unsupervised races in the future,” he explained.
Meanwhile, MAM’s acting chief executive officer Muizz Azli said MAM was ready to assist motorcross activists in coordinating all protocols for the races.
“We want to highlight sanctioned (supervised) races because motocross is a good platform for races and good riders also come to train,” he said.
— Bernama
