Coppins at the double in shifting Spanish terrain - Yamaha Motocross Team’s Josh Coppins aced both MX1 motos at the Grand Prix of Spain and the second round of the FIM 2007 Motocross World Championship to extend his 100% record of success in the current campaign and in his new ‘blue’ colours.

The New Zealander eased away from Kevin Strijbos, who ended the day second overall, and Max Nagl (the teenager gaining his maiden podium with third place and the first piece of silverware for Germany since 2002) in the two motos, watched by 22,300 spectators. The 30 year old seemingly made light work of the Grand Prix that had faced considerable alteration to the schedule after relentless rain throughout Friday and Saturday forced practice and qualification to be cancelled on the first day of the event.

Sunday morning warm-up was substituted by Timed Practice in which Kawasaki’s Tanel Leok gained his second career pole position. Just before the Grand Prix motos of 35 minutes and 2 laps got underway the clouds dispersed and hot spring sunshine belated arrived to begin cooking the terrain. The surface drained and dried quickly and the end result was a set of second races for each class on a very rough and rutted course.

The MX2 class provided two largely formulaic affairs dictated by the ranking at the end of the first lap as starts proved crucial, particularly in the soggiest opening race in which the 250 four-strokes carved the soft mud into channels of bumps and crevices. Both motos exploded into life during the final laps however as Antonio Cairoli easily produced the ‘performance of the meeting’ by cutting down the lead of Alpinestars’ Christophe Pourcel (that at stages involved more than ten seconds in both races) and embarking on an assault of the World Champion. Pourcel (wearing his Tech 8s with a new Eiffel Tower graphic set), still not fully race fit after missing months to a leg fracture sustained in a Supercross incident during January, survived the first skirmish to win his first moto of the year. Cairoli was determined to gain overall success and committed to a race-long chase of the French teenager in Moto2. With the crowd cheering him on the Sicilian again hounded the Frenchman into the last circulations and earned a spectacular victory with a manoeuvre barely four corners remaining. His ecstatic post-race celebrations capped a bold and flamboyant display.

The Yamaha double means that both victors in Spain head the fledgling standings.

“We were here in 2004 and I remember the first race was really bad but by the second the track was pretty good, so I knew that if the sun came out it would turn around,” said Coppins, who now leads the MX1 class by a hefty nineteen points after only two meetings. “I was already feeling comfortable on the Yamaha on hard-pack prior to this race. I knew that we had a good set-up on the bike so I was looking forward to coming here and believed that we had a chance to make a good race.”

The World Championship paddock heads directly west to Agueda, south of Porto, where the Grand Prix of Portugal next weekend will represent the third stop of fifteen on the ’07 schedule.