Roger Magee is hoping to dominate this year’s MX2 title fight with reigning champion Conrad Mewse and newly-signed Bas Vaessen spearheading his rebranded Hitachi KTM fuelled by Milwaukee team’s assault on the championship.
The Dutchman’s place on the team was announced at the start of the month and Roger is confident that he has what it takes to make his presence felt in the UK’s most prestigious series.
“If you look at his [GP] results from last year he sort of wasn’t that much slower than Hunter Lawrence,” said Roger, “and he maybe didn’t have just as good a bike as what Hunter had and he was always knocking on the door of that top 10 or 12. Now we’ll get him onto a KTM I think we and he will see the benefit of it.”
Roger’s happy with Mewse’s conditioning and pre-season preparation with the opening round at FatCat just over seven weeks away.
“He’s in a better place now than he was this time last year. Training’s been going well so we’re doing what we think are all the right things to get him to that next level we know he’s got the speed for.
“From an ability point of view I certainly think a 1-2 [in the Maxxis] is possible but, as we all know, anything can happen in racing. All it takes is a rider to miss one round due to a small injury or something and that makes it more difficult because as we’ve seen for the past few years the top six guys seldom change so it’s very hard to get any sort of large lead, even if you’re winning every race.”
Mewse and Vaessen will be joined in MX2 by new signing Callum Green who moves up from the youth ranks this season while 2017 champion Graeme Irwin will represent the team in MX1.
Picture © Nuno Laranjeira
