The French rider, who won three rounds of the nine event series, had seen his title challenge wilt after poor results on sandy circuits, but on the artificial track at the road race facility of Assen he was finally able to show his ability in sandy conditions. He pushed forward from an initial sixth to finish second, and in the second moto the following morning he advanced from fifth to hold second place for seven laps in the opening moto before the eventual winner, a local sand expert, pushed him back to a still respectable third. The combined result gave him second on the weekend and he finished the series in fourth position, just two points behind the bronze medallist.

Maxime Desprey: “ My goal this weekend was to get a podium result. We know that I’m not a sand specialist but we spent a lot of time in Belgium with Jacky Vimond and we finally got this good result on a sandy track. I had a good speed this weekend; in the first race I got a second position but today the end of the second race was not easy as I crashed during the warm up and had pain in my leg. This season was tough with good and bad weekends; I won in Italy, Spain and Sweden but also had five DNFs; maybe I put too much pressure on myself as the goal was to be champion and then return to the GPs.”