A decade of making the difference: Tim Gajser’s remarkable MXGP Honda story

2024 summed up much of the ten-year FIM Motocross World Championship arch for both Tim Gajser and Honda: sustained excellence, title contention and moments of inspirational brilliance. Here is the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind the force that has bagged five crowns in both MX2 and MXGP classes.

By Adam Wheeler

It’s late afternoon on Sunday 6^th October. A rainy mist has been covering a dark Matterley Basin circuit in southern England for the 77^th Motocross of Nations. The final corners, metres and seconds of the last race of the last major international meeting of the season saw Tim Gajser set fire to the sky. The world #2 and HRC star lunged past brandmate and AMA 450SX and SMX champion Jett Lawrence into the penultimate curve to dramatically seize the closing chequered flag of 2024 and complete a 1-1 sweep on the day. It was a fist-pumping conclusion to a gripping duel between the CRF450R riders and had the vast and sodden crowd on their feet. The feat was a powerful statement from a powerful athlete, and a parting gesture to a long Grand Prix and international campaign where #243 and HRC had again helped set the highest possible standard at the peak of a perilous and immensely tough and difficult sport.

The 28-year-old Slovenian might have been exercising some demons that day in the UK. The previous Sunday, in Spain for the final Grand Prix of the year, he missed out on his fourth premier class crown by a slender ten points. After sixty motos and a total of 986 points notched for a season that started back in March in Argentina, Gajser was denied at the last. He didn’t want the same feeling at Matterley.

Reversing adversity has been part of the Gajser and HRC narrative. The blend of rider and brand is one of the strongest and most long-standing collaborations in MXGP racing. Only one other current combination in the gate has had the same longevity and rate of success. The unity is almost unique. The setbacks – injury, maturation and fresh rivalries since 2016 in the MXGP category - have been countered, and supremacy has reigned thanks to the bond that was forged back at the end of 2013.  

“I said to everybody ‘if we want a young rider…then is the guy’,” Giacomo Gariboldi is a man with a clear vision. A successful and wealthy Italian businessman, passionate about the sport of motocross, he set up a ‘hobby’ team with friend and cohort Massimo Castelli for ambitions in the EMX250 European Championship in the middle of the noughties. The potential blossomed and in less than five years Gariboldi Racing was in the MX2 paddock. Giacomo had a taste of working with exceptional teenage talent in the forms of Christophe Charlier and a young Harri Kullas. By the early stage of the next decade he wanted more autonomy and began an association with Honda that then solidified like steel. “The first year we found a good solution with Honda Europe and a little bit of support from Japan. That support got bigger and bigger every year,” Castelli remembers. “Tim was sixteen then and Giacomo was always looking around to find the next new young rider.”

Gajser had been the shining star on the European scene in 2012. He had won the EMX125 European and FIM Junior World Championships and popped up in EMX250 in the same year, earning a podium finish in one of his three appearances. His speed and competitiveness meant that he vaulted straight into MX2 for 2013 but it was a tough learning stint where the teenager and his family felt underwhelmed by their technical package and circumstances, and sought a way out of their contractual situation. The paddock was on alert.

“I got a phone number through a contact and we met towards the end of that season [2013],” Gariboldi recalls. “My first thoughts were that he was a very shy and nice guy, very well educated and clever for his age. He was still studying which was not very common in the paddock. He said it was very important for him to keep going with the schooling. My first impression was really good. You saw somebody who really wanted to reach the top and it showed through all the results in his career until that point and he has won in every category that he has raced.”

“When you win like that each year it means that you become familiar with winning, and eventually that would come through to the MX2 class,” he reasoned.

“Many people smiled when I told them I was signing with Gariboldi because Honda didn’t have the strongest 250 at that time. Even now talking with the Japanese we joke about it,” Gajser recounts from the comfort of his immaculate and opulent (by motocross standards) motorhome at the 2024 Swedish Grand Prix.

“I don’t know why I picked the team,” he ponders. “I think it was just the feeling with Giacomo from the first meeting. I still remember that day; it was the 2013 Motocross of Nations at Teutschenthal [Germany]. I went with my father and my stepmother. I was just seventeen. Roger Harvey [former MXGP HRC General Manager] was there. We were talking with the Japanese also and we made the deal. Another brand had also come to my house in Slovenia. We were all living in a 25m2 apartment with my grandparents then. There were a few teams that saw something in me. 2013 was very difficult for me and I was in a long-term contract that was not easy to break but I was really unhappy there. It was not good for confidence, and I was not riding well.”

“We’ve seen many riders with those flashes of brilliance and at that age they can do it,” said Harvey. “They have all the tricks on the bike and everything they need and then some continue to crash and do not develop whereas others mature. I saw him as a good opportunity.”

The union began with the CRF250R in 2014. Gajser posted his first moto wins (two) and podiums (six) on the way to 5^th in the MX2 championship: Honda’s highest ever standing since the inception of the class in 2004. 2014 was also the year where HRC returned to MXGP in an official capacity with another team and with the CRF450R in the MXGP division. Gariboldi, Castelli and his crew were learning quickly that satisfying their quiet racer’s demands meant placating his father Bogo who acted as trainer, mentor, advisor and everything else in between.

“The first impact was a bit of a shock and it was not so easy to manage; Tim was always in the back, the father was two steps in front,” Castelli remembers. “But finally we made it work and had good results.”

“It was strange because in the meetings with the Japanese engineers he [Bogo] wanted to attend, and said he had made all the settings for the bikes for Tim in the past,” Gariboldi half-smiles. “The Japanese were a bit unsure but then I think they also understood that it was important he was there because during training he could stand at the side of the track and immediately see what was working or not working on the bike. Tim would come in and his comments would be the same. Both of them gave good information.”

The Gajser unit provided winning pedigree thanks to their work ethic, devotion to the cause and determination. Tim had the ability but also the fortitude to ride through and around problems. “He can take pain and in motocross you need to take and hide pain,” Harvey said at the time. 

“Riders like Tim you can only find every ten years,” Gariboldi underlined. “We don't see a rider with his talent often and it is special for everybody.”

2015 and 2016 was a whirlwind. The first Grand Prix win at Arco di Trento in Italy, the first red plate (from the Dutch Grand Prix) and then the MX2 title; a major milestone for the team, the rider (Slovenia’s first world championship) and Honda who earned an FIM certificate for the first time since 2000. “I had good support from HRC, it was a Japanese bike but Japan was not really that involved,” Gajser says. 

Together with the Gariboldi crew, Gajser and family elected to jump straight into MXGP for 2016, as a ‘satellite’ effort to the HRC structure but with official machinery. Gajser had been using a stock CRF450R for training during his MX2 title year and his size, strength and technique was seen as a natural fit for the demands of the larger engine and the extra inertia and force required for the premier class even if he was relatively inexperienced against riders like Tony Cairoli, Clement Desalle and brandmate Gautier Paulin.

“We all knew that coming from pre-season I was feeling good and was quick in the tests,” Gajser remembers of the 2016 term. “Obviously you compare the lap-times and at that time we were testing together with HRC which was Gautier and Bobby [Evgeny Bobryshev] and there were some 250 riders as well. I was always the fastest, and not only by one second, sometimes even more. We knew I could do well…and I adapted quickly: Qatar went 1-1 for the first ever race with the 450 in the MXGP class.”

16 podiums from 18 rounds with 7 wins meant Gajser blasted the MXGP scene. He led every significant statistics chart. Tim was the second successive rookie premier class champion (Romain Febvre had managed the same distinction in 2015) but he was the first - and to-date only – rider to claim MX2 and MXGP crowns back-to-back. “It was an achievement and when nobody was expecting it from me,” he smiles. “Confidence helps in every single sport. As well as the trust and belief that you can do it, and when you have the confirmation that you can be the fastest on track then it just grows and it’s easier. When I became MXGP world champion it came really quickly; I was just an MXGP rookie and only turned 20 towards the end of that season.”

Gajser had the world at his young boots. But then he started to wade through some of the darker aspects of the sport. Injury would strike during 2017 with a cracked shoulder and then a serious 2018 pre-season smash at Mantova in Italy when he broke his jaw and sustained a concussion. His desire to break free from his father’s domain also manifested itself in increased pressure, stress and therefore misjudgements on track. The situation reached a peak in 2018 where the rider established his own regime and life together with partner Spela and started to lean on the team even further. Underneath the attitude and the skills as a racer it was the connection with Gariboldi and the crew that was also another rod of success that had been perhaps unseen or unappreciated. This link tightened and endured as Tim came even closer into the structure that took on even more formality from 2017 when Gariboldi’s set-up became the sole HRC platform in the sport.

“In the beginnings of my career and even up until 2018 my father was fully involved, and he took care of everything,” Tim remembers. “My job was just to ride and train. As we grew you want some freedom, to be independent and decide about your life. That’s when, let’s say, we started to split a little bit. I started to grow up, I caught Spela and we started to live together.”

“Having the team then helped a lot,” he continues. “I always had people I trusted at the races. If I had something to say or a needed to talk to someone then there was Giacomo, Massimo or Nico, my mechanic. Sometimes you just need to speak and get something out that is inside you that is hurting you.”

Gajser was able to supplant one family structure for another one in red, and a setup that was heathy for his goals. The security and assurance provided by the team coupled with the professionalism and the commitment of HRC to the best possible results was what Gajser was seeking personally and for his vocation. He even reorientated his career trajectory because of it. “The plan was to always try and win both titles – MX2 and MXGP – and then go to America [AMA Supercross and Motocross] but it happened to quickly that I was not ready for that step and we had built such a nice relationship with Giacomo and the guys,” he says. “I was happy and it’s not easy to go away from where you are truly happy. I am also the type of person that really likes my base. I am in Slovenia alone, training by myself at my facility. Only my team knows what I am doing and I like that. I don’t like the idea of being in Belgium or in America you can see that so many guys train together. I’m maybe more old school! I knew the decision to go to America would mean changing everything. To make a choice at 20 is not easy.”

Gajser’s consistent performance had rapidly gained the trust of the squad and the company. “I think it is the same with every manufacturer or team: in the beginning you have to show something,” he explains. “When you bring some results then maybe you can have a bit more say and you have more trust from the team because they can see you are working correctly. The team wanted me in Italy a bit more and also Lommel in the beginning but they saw I was training well and when I came to the races then I was ready and fit. That’s how we built a great relationship and trust. The training mechanic always reports each session and I am in touch with Roger [Shenton, Technical Co-ordinator], with Giacomo, with the physio almost every day. Everybody knows what I am doing. It feels like a team but also feels like a family. We are working together and we earn money but it doesn’t feel like work at all! It’s like a hobby, which makes it even more fun.” 

The ’engine’ fired up the rev range again for more titles in 2019, 2020 (becoming Honda’s most successful motocrosser in history) and 2022. In 2021 he was part of a thrilling three-way joust for the title at the final round in Italy. In 2024 the dramatic climax would repeat itself as he went head-to-head with Jorge Prado. 2024 was an outstanding crusade of pressure and competition: 16 podiums and 4 wins from 20 rounds and ten measly points the divider. The team were still problem-solving and chiming. “I am only human so sometimes I get lost as well and I have people around me that can step in,” Gajser says. “It was the case in Indonesia. For the first weekend I was struggling big-time with the set-up and myself. Then during the week and before the second GP there we had a meeting and we changed everything, which is strange for me because I usually don’t like to change all that much without having time to test or at least try things in a training session. We went straight to Free Practice and to see….in the end it turned out to be way-better. I was more comfortable on the bike and the riding was better and the results were better [he was 2^nd]. In those moments it is important to have a team behind you because when you are winning it’s easy. When you are struggling then you need help around you.”

2024 ended with P2 but the outcome had once again marked the Gajser and HRC synergy as elite in MXGP. It was a rebound from 2023 when another pre-season spill had led to a broken femur and the most serious ailment of Tim’s career, forcing him to miss the first eleven GPs of the season. Although from the despair and the pain came the substance to enter 2024 with aplomb. 

“It is strange to say but when I broke the femur I was already burned,” he reflects. “The season hadn’t even started and I knew I was already tired; I didn’t know how I was going to do twenty GPs. Then the crash happened and I was angry and sad I would have to miss races but on the other side it was a relief. I knew I had a couple of months to reset and recover and get the motivation back. When you are doing the routine for so long – every year the same – racing from the beginning of February to the start of October, then testing then in November is busy! You have to travel all around: Japan, sponsors, shows, galas. People think we don’t do anything but after a few weeks already you then have to think about training again for the next season. That’s how it was for eleven years. In Covid times we didn’t even have a break. In the end it is not easy to be a motocross athlete. We have to sacrifice a lot and we don’t have a normal life or holidays and there are no weekends off if you want to be top three. In the end though I like what I am doing and I am enjoying it, still.”

Gajser’s story is punctuated by the evolving path of the CRF450R and how Honda wanted the usability of their motorcycle to match the power and the advanced level of electronics as well as concepts such as mass centralisation. Tim has been through three generations of the bike. “The best one? I really like the CRF I have now but I also have to mention previous model and how nice that felt to ride. It was another new generation, so it was for 2021, ‘22 and ’23 and we did not have to change much at all, just some little things and I was comfortable. Hondas are normally really good for handling and the power is amazing: it’s a good package for tight corners, long corners but also the way to power comes in is really nice and consistent. Obviously, you can change these things and HRC can do whatever you want and they have open hands, even if you want to change something with the frame. It’s nice to have those opportunities and that’s the real meaning of a factory team. If you are not happy with something and everybody sees we can improve then they go back to Japan, build something and then we test. We test quite often.” 

As a HRC rider Gajser also had to craft efficient relationships with the Japanese as well as his immediate technical staff. “Every year I went to Japan and to the company and when you have a meeting there with sixty engineers that are only working on your bike it is impressive. You sit there and they ask you all sorts of questions because one guy will be focused just on handling, another one on the frame, another one on the electronics; you realise how big HRC is and how much effort they are putting in to get the best bike. It’s nice for a rider to see that a large group of people want the same thing and that’s to win titles. It makes you even more motivated.”

2025 will be Gajser’s twelfth season as a Grand Prix rider and he will be 29 towards the end of the calendar. “He is getting older and even more professional, more precise,” Castelli says. “He wants more from the bike whereas a few years ago that side didn’t really matter and he just rode it. Now a small thing can make a difference and he’s looking for that.” Tim will be in HRC colours for his tenth tilt at MXGP spoils. “I still have 2025 and good relationships count for so much,” he says. “The times we are living now with twenty GPs a year then it is not easy for athletes to go into their late 20s in this sport. As long as I still enjoy going to the races, the training and waking up every morning with a smile on my face going to the gym or the practice track then I will ride professionally.”

“Ten years now with Honda: it is crazy how it has gone,” he adds. “They usually say when you are having fun, enjoying yourself and you are happy time goes fast and it is something like that.”

Tim Gajser: fast in everything.