Kawasaki Team CLS
Team CLS Kawasaki go into the 2010 MX2 GP campaign on the back of their best season to date with even more drive and determination to succeed.
Having recorded their first victories at World Championship level last summer as Steven Frossard stormed to 6th in the series, Kawasaki’s official team in the quarter-litre class has expanded its horizons still further with the addition of a second potential winner in Belgian Jeremy Van Horebeek,
the establishment of a new technical base closer to Kawasaki’s European HQ in the Netherlands, and the start of a sensational new partnership with Pro Circuit, America’s most successful team of the last 15 years.
A relatively new team created as recently as 2006, CLS was initially formed by Jean Jacques Luisetti, the owner of Floride Motos, Kawasaki’s number one dealer in Europe for the last eight years, together with Thierry Chizat Suzzoni, another local businessman in the Provence region of southern France, to further the career of former 125cc world champion Mickael Maschio as he stepped up to the MX1 class.
Injuries sadly frustrated the first year effort, but the professionalism of the newly-formed team was not lost on its backers, and the first step in the right direction came with respectable GP results and runner-up placing in the French MX2 national series for Anthony Boissiere during the second year of operation.
Steven Frossard had also shown great promise during his GP rookie season and blossomed in 2008 with his first GP podium results and the French title, an advance which was consolidated last summer with 6th in the world, two moto wins in the hyper-competitive MX2 GPs and a place on the podium of the prestigious Motocross of Nations on his first cap for France, whilst Gregory Aranda added to the impressive team portfolio with a string of top ten finishes in MX1.
Kawasaki Motors Europe, as ever with a keen eye to make their operation even more effective, asked CLS to concentrate all of their efforts in 2010 on the MX2 class with full support from Kawasaki, and the team responded quickly to sign a second potential winner in Jeremy Van Horebeek, one of the most promising up-and-coming riders from Belgium.
But all the riding talent in the world cannot be expected to deliver the results without the right technical support, and neither CLS nor Kawasaki have been dormant in this field.
A collaboration with Pro-Circuit, the dominant force in US racing in recent years with no less than 23 motocross and supercross titles to their credit, was announced at the end of last year. The result of months of negotiation between CLS boss Luisetti, Pro Circuit owner Mitch Payton and Kawasaki, the deal will see Frossard and Van Horebeek mounted on Pro Circuit tuned bikes prepared by iconoclastic engineer Harry Nolte at the team’s new workshop in Holland.
Nolte, a multiple world title-winning mechanic with John van den Berk, the late Donny Schmit, Grant Langston and the great Stefan Everts, has been working on the project directly with Payton for more than a year now, and the signing of experienced mechanics Yann Lozano, who worked with Everts for his final titles, and David Moreno as well as an extensive testing programme in the States have all added to the justifiable confidence for the coming season.
With two proven winners and such a well-conceived set-up in all departments, there can only be one aim for 2010 - the MX2 world title for Kawasaki Team CLS and Pro Circuit !
