EXCITING CONTENT
For a country with no permanent racetracks whatsoever Switzerland has struck a rich seam of championship-winning form recently . With Swiss law banning motorsports outright it seems to be a peculiar nationality to be born with if you want to become a bike racer . Even a club racer , never mind a would-be World Champ . “ Strange , yes ,” said new WorldSSP Champion Dominique Aegerter , “ but we have already three ( recent ) World Champions , two in WorldSSP and one in 125cc , so it is sad that the Swiss people do not really help us to build a race track . At least we have some good companies in Switzerland and some money flows in there . It is also not easy to get sponsors but if you have some good connections , that helps . But , the first thing is that you have to have good support from your family . Without my family I could never have achieved what I have achieved in all my career . I was lucky to be picked out of some other riders in motocross and then my father was pushing me to go road racing . Then I had a mentor , Olivier Metraux , to go in the World Championship in 125s .” Sure enough , having no domestic racing scene has not stopped Randy Krummenacher ( in 2019 ) and now Dominique Aegerter in 2021 from becoming WorldSSP Champions , hoisting that distinctive white-on-red Swiss flag highest of all . Aegerter has it emblazoned nearly full size on top of his crash helmet … You cannot miss him even among all those other blue Yamahas out on track . For multiple reasons Aegerter ’ s win this year is remarkable , with even a touch of the historic thrown in . With one round to go , Dominique has scored ten race wins in only 19 races . Not bad for a rookie … Yes , he had never raced a single time in WorldSSP until he qualified fifth and then finished second in Race One at Motorland Aragon on Saturday 22nd May . He has followed a former Moto3 / 2 path set out first of all in recent times by Sandro Cortese in 2018 , then Krummenacher , then Andrea Locatelli the 2020 champion . So why are all these Moto2 guys so good at WorldSSP ? And most of all , why was Dominique the champion , not one of the others , this year ? Aegerter said , “ You can see many riders who come from Moto2 who are quite fast in Superport but also I have a lot of experience of Moto2 ; for quite a lot of time I was a top five or top ten rider . I could use this experience because we have both Saturday and Sunday races in WorldSSP . With a fast bike and strong support from suppliers , good mechanics who make no mistakes , and a top crew chief who can always make the last final adjustment on the bike for Saturday and Sunday … With a good team and a good bike , a good rider can then handle winning the championship . Ten Kate also invested a lot of time to go testing in the summer , in Most , Magny-Cours or Navarra , to get more data to be more prepared on the race weekends . Plus , I never gave up and trained very hard , physically . This is why we got the championship .” At 31 years-of-age Dominique made the jump across to a first WorldSSP campaign , after 10-and-a-bit seasons in Moto2 and three seasons in 125cc GP racing before that . To win outright in your rookie season is therefore doubly amazing but just to add an extra level of interest , he not only won it at over 30 years of age , but in his first season of production-derived racing . So , does having to wait a while for a World Championship make is more special ? To win the first one at 31 years-of-age rather than 21 ? Dominique laughs , hesitates , than says , “ I would for sure like to be 21 again ! But at 31 I feel very much at my best age , I feel ready for everything , I feel fast , confident , well prepared with my body , the mental side - in the end it is just a number .” Dominique was also crowned champion after a strange year , even inside a strange pandemic year again for many people , as he fought it out on two very
different fronts . He had actually signed an agreement to ride in the MotoE World Cup before the chance to race for the legendary Ten Kate Yamaha Team in WorldSSP . He competed hard and well in MotoE - too hard right at the end - to only just lose the title after colliding with eventual champion Jordi Torres , causing the Spanish rider to fall . But , no matter , ‘ Domi ’ had his other parallel path of potential glory to follow , in the full FIM Supersport World Championship , with the legendary Ten Kate squad seeing him as their main point of winning focus . With Honda , Ten Kate had won nine riders ’ World Championships and one WorldSBK title . Finding a way back into WorldSBK after being dropped as the lead Honda team before the 2019 season , they raced in WorldSBK on R1 Yamahas for part of 2019 and all of 2020 , but had to stop that 1000cc project this year , and concentrate on WorldSSP only . Through EAB Racing there was a Ten Kate Yamaha WorldSSP effort in 2020 , but below their
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