Sidecarcross World Championship

The Sidecar Motocross World Championship is an annual event, first held in 1980. It is organized by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme. Before 1980, a European competition was held from 1971 onwards.

History

The sport is predominantly amateur, with only the top-riders, like former world champions Ben Adriaenssen, Daniël Willemsen and Etienne Bax being professional.
The Sidecarcross World Championship, first held in 1980 and organised by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, is an annual competition. All races, manufacturers and the vast majority of riders in the competition are in and from Europe. Sidecarcross is similar to motocross except that the teams consist of two riders, a driver and a passenger. Races are held on the same tracks as solo motocross but the handling of the machines differs as sidecars do not lean. The majority of physical work in the sport is carried out by the passenger, who speeds up the sidecarcross in corners by leaning out. The coordination between the driver and the passenger is therefore of highest importance. Record world champion Daniël Willemsen estimated that the passenger's contribution to the success of a team is at least 50%, and that not enough credit is given to the passenger.
The sport is especially popular in Eastern Europe. Parallel to the riders' competition, a manufacturers' championship is also held.
While usually a male-dominated sport, the 2014 season saw the participation of a woman driver in the competition. Belgian Sabrina van Calster scored two points in the first race of the Swiss Grand Prix.
The 2016 season champions were the Belgian–Dutch combination Jan Hendrickx and Ben van den Bogaart, having won their first World Championship together. Also van den Bogaart previously had won two World Championships as the passenger of Ben Adriaenssen.

Overview

The World Championship in sidecar motocross is held annually form the European spring to autumn. The fourteen Grands Prix of the 2019 season were held in nine countries: Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain, Ukraine, and Latvia. The 2015 season, in comparison to the 2014 season, had five Grands Prix added. Germany increased its number of Grands Prix from two to three while Latvia increased theirs from one to two. The Belgian Grand Prix was re-added to the season after having been cancelled in 2014 because of bad weather. Ukraine, who had its 2014 Grand Prix cancelled because of the political situation in the country, originally received a Grand Prix for 2015 but this event was removed from the calendar again. Switzerland also had its number of Grands Prix increased from one to two while Spain had not been on the calendar since 2005.

Participants by country

In the 2015 season, 56 teams finished in the points in the competition, with the drivers hailing from fourteen European nations. Of these, the drivers for the Netherlands were the most populous, having nine drivers in the competition, followed by Belgium with eight and Estonia with seven. In the last six seasons, drivers from the following countries took part in the competition and earned points:

Country	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Netherlands	10	9	9	11	13	9
Belgium	9	7	6	6	9	8
Estonia	6	6	7	6	4	7
Germany	8	6	4	5	6	6
Czech Republic	2	3	3	3	4	6
Switzerland	2	1	2	3	4	6
United Kingdom	8	9	7	8	5	4
France	5	3	3	4	5	4
Finland	2	1	0	0	2	1
Sweden	3	3	3	3	1	1
Austria	1	2	0	2	1	1
Lithuania	3	1	2	1	1	1
Latvia	3	3	3	4	0	1
Russia	5	6	4	0	0	1
Italy	1	0	0	0	1	0
Ukraine	2	2	1	0	0	0
Belarus	0	1	0	0	0	0
Denmark	1	0	0	0	0	0
Moldova	1	0	0	0	0	0
Overall	72	63	54	56	56	56

Drivers who took part in the competition but did not win points are not captured here as the FIM does not list them in the end-of-season pilots' ranking.

Calendar

The Grand Prix calendar for the 2019 season:

Date

Location

Race Winners

Grand Prix Winner

Source

7 April

History

Predecessors

The history of international competition started with the FIM Cup in 1971, a form of an unofficial European championship, organised by the FIM. The first ever race was held on 25 April 1971 at Pernes-les-Fontaines, France.
From 1975, the competition was officially called the European Championship. From the 1980 season onwards, it carried the title World Championship, even though, in practice, virtually all drivers and passengers are European, except for a small number of riders from the US and Australia, and all races are held in Europe. In its history, there has never been a race outside Europe and majority of the races are in central Europe. The appearance of strong Latvian drivers however has taken races to the Baltic region in the last few years. As of 2007, 24 European countries have hosted GPs, Germany holding the number one spot. Races have also been staged at countries with no strong sidecarcross connections, like Greece, Norway and Northern Ireland.
The competitors in the world championship are mostly amateurs who also compete in their countries' domestic championships. One world champion, Willemsen, also won the Dutch national championship the same year. Most national championships are actually "open" events, in which non-nationals are permitted to compete. Sergis and Rasmanis, for example, also won the German championship in 1998.
The highest number of championships has been won by Daniël Willemsen with ten, with the last of those coming in 2012. The most successful team is Kristers Serģis and Artis Rasmanis with five titles together. The two missed out on a sixth title, when in 1999 they lost by only one point to Daniël Willemsen.

History of the World Championship

The first edition of the world championship in 1980 saw the only German victory to date with the combination Reinhard Böhler/Siegfried Müller taking out the title. The year after, the championship went to the Netherlands with Ton van Heugten/Frits Kiggen. The next eight seasons, the Swiss riders triumphed. Emil Bollhalder/Karl Büsser won the championship in 1982 and 1983, both times with a narrow margin, 11 points in the first year and 28 in the second. Unlucky runner-up in the three seasons from 1981 to 1983 were the Germans Josef Brockhausen/Hubert Rebele, missing out quite narrowly and retiring in 1983 after the third attempt, as did Bollhalder, but as the world champion.
From 1984 to 1987, four titles went to Hansi Bächtold/Fritz Fuß. Again, there was no luck for the runner-up with the Dutch combination August Muller/Henk van Heek coming second in 1985, 1986 and 1987. In 1986, only 7 points separated winner from second place. Bächtold retired as the new record world champion in 1987.
Christoph Hüsser/Andreas Hüsser won the titles in 1988 and 1989 and continued to race after that until 1996, never coming close to another world championship again. Benny Janssen/Tiny Janssen became the last to win one championship only when the finished on top in 1990, beating the German team Michael Garhammer/Ralf Haas by only 13 points and ending eight years of Swiss domination.
Eimbert Timmermans/Eric Verhagen from the Netherlands beat the Belgian duo Eddy Ramon/Gino Strubbe for the next two titles in 1991 and 92. After this, the world championship returned to Switzerland with Andreas Fuhrer/Adrian Käser equaling the record of four titles in a row from 1993 to 1996 and then retiring from the competition.
The 1997 season marked the beginning of a new era with all previous World Champions having either retired before, or at the end of, the 1996 season. With Kristers Serģis/Artis Rasmanis the 1997 championship went to Latvia for the first time. The tightest race for the championship so far saw them beat the German/Dutch team of Alois Wenninger/Henry van de Wiel by four points. The year after, they won again, this time with a twenty-point gap to Daniël Willemsen/Marcel Willemsen.
1999, saw the tightest race ever when only one point at the end of the season separated the Willemsen brothers from the Latvian title holders. The outcome of the season was not clear until the Willemsen brothers were cleared of having received outside assistance in the second-last race which clinched them the world title, since Artis Rasmanis had lodged a formal complaint. In 2000, Kristers Serģis/Artis Rasmanis came back, beating Daniël Willemsen/Sven Verbrugge by 20 points, the last tight race to date. The Latvians became the new record holder after title number four and five in 2001 and 2002, Willemsen coming second all three seasons.
From 2003 to 2008, Daniël Willemsen made up for his lost titles and won six in a row, becoming the most successful driver so far. He won two each with passengers Kaspars Stupelis, Sven Verbrugge and Reto Grütter.
In 2009, the title went to a Belgian driver for the first time, Joris Hendrickx winning the championship, with his Latvian passenger Kaspars Liepiņš. In 2010, the title returned to the Netherlands with Daniël Willemsen taking out his eighth championship, together with Gertie Eggink as his passenger. In the following year, Willemsen took out another world championship, this time with Sven Verbrugge as his passenger once more, the third for the combination.
Willemsen won a historic tenth World Championship in 2012, finishing five points ahead of Etienne Bax, despite having to exchange his passenger twice. Willemsen used Haralds Kurpnieks as his passenger in the first Grand Prix of the season, Kenny van Gaalen in the following five Grand Prix and Lauris Daiders in the remaining. Kurpnieks suffered a broken wrist in the opening GP while van Gaalen injured his knee in the second French GP, both being thereby sidelined for lengthy periods of time.
The 2013 season marked, with Ben Adriaenssen, the second time that a Belgian driver won the title. Defending champion Daniël Willemsen missed most of the season with injury while 2012 runners-up Etienne Bax came second once more. Adriaenssen and his Dutch passenger Ben van den Bogaart also won the 2014 championship while Etienne Bax came second for third consecutive time. Bax finally won the competition for the first time in 2015, with Kaspars Stupelis as his passenger who had already been World Champion in 2003 and 2004 with Daniël Willemsen.