Jonass And His Home Gp

While former MX2 World Champion, Pauls Jonass sits in 11th place in the MXGP championship points, the Latvian spectators will arrive at the Kegums circuit next weekend with high hope for their hero.

Jonass, who has been racing Grand Prix motocross since his debut season in 2014, will be entering his 161st Grand Prix in Latvia and with 12 Grand Prix victories, including the last one in the mud in Portugal in 2024, he still shows speed enough to not only make a GP podium, but also take victory, just as he showed two years ago in Portugal.

With 140 points to his name as we enter the Latvian GP, Jonass has shown signs of his best form, but cannot get the end result, due to one thing or another. Now, with his home GP just days away, you can be sure he will be putting everything into his preparation for what he hopes will be his best GP result in 2026.

Last weekend in Germany, Jonass raced in the top ten throughout the first race to finish eighth, but his hopes of a good overall result were stifled by a crash early in the race. The Latvian responded well to get back into a points-scoring position and kept pushing to eventually finish twelfth for eleventh overall on the day. He is now just two points from the top ten in the series standings.

"Eighth in the first race was ok but I was not satisfied with my riding. The riding was much better in the second race, but I crashed at the second corner. The team has been working hard, and I need to turn it into results on the track. The most positive thing to come out of this weekend is that I'm excited to be going to Kegums next week; the last two years in a row I crashed here and missed my home GP."

In the previous Grand Prix in Trentino, Italy, Jonass looked comfortable in eighth for half of the first race, but he lost his flow during the second half of the race to be pushed back temporarily to thirteenth before regrouping decisively on the final lap, dropping his lap time by two seconds to regain twelfth. After an accident early in the second race and picking himself up from dead-last he dug deep to put in one of his best rides of the season, maintaining top six lap times to the finish to narrowly miss a top ten finish by just half-a-second.

"It was a difficult day. I didn't get the best jump in the first race, but I came good through the first couple of turns to be eighth; then I got arm pump already on the second lap, so it was difficult to hold on after that. We switched to a hardpack tyre for race two, but Pancar crashed right in front of me coming out of turn one and I hit his bike. I hit my ribs and was struggling for breath for a couple of laps, but I kept pushing with good lap times and got to eleventh, not far from eighth, at the finish. It was a decent ride, but the result was not what we are looking for."

Rest assured, a home crowd always brings out the best in riders, and the Latvian crowd always seem to bring something special out in Jonass, with second overall in 2022, third overall in 2018, second overall in 2017, and second overall in 2015.