The Italian Motocross season gets underway this weekend with the opening round of the International Italian Championship taking place at Mantova.
At the end of 2024, it was announced, despite only being 18 years old that Lucas Coenen will make the move up to the 450cc and contest the MXGP World Championship – a big step up.
Both the Coenen’s will race KTM machinery in 2025 after signing deals with the De Carli Racing team who make the switch back over from GasGas to KTM.
We recently caught up with Davide de Carli who give us his thoughts on the Coenen’s…
On signing the Coenen’s for the 2025 season…
I’m really, really excited. We have already announced that the Coenen Brothers will be our riders for the 2025 season, so I’m really happy to start the 2025 season with them. They are really young, talented and fast. We are already working to build a great season.
On Lucas moving up to MXGP despite only being 18…
they are really young, because they recently turned 18. So, we like to work with young riders and give them the chance to build a good future for them and for the team. We like to make them emerge and build new championships. This is our goal. Lucas will race a 450cc in MXGP and it will be a great challenge. This decision, actually, in the beginning, was coming from him. Of course, we talked about it together, but there was no forcing from us. I mean, Lucas really believes in it and I believe it too. I also believe that riders should not be forced. The whole team believes that they can do really well. I think we are working in the right direction to be able to build a really strong season.
It’s a great challenge. Lucas is very young, I think he’s one of the youngest riders in the history to switch to the 450cc machine at 18 years old. Now I cannot remember other riders who did it but think Clement Desalle, he was really young also. But the goal is always the same. The goal is to try to win and we are working hard. We will see at the end of the year what result we will achieve. I think that he can do really well. The MXGP World Championship is the premier category. There are many excellent riders and many World Champions so we will see.
On his progress on the 450cc so far…
After he raced the Motocross Nations, he made such a great race there. Unfortunately, he crashed at the event and broke his collarbone. So, we had to wait a bit to start the program. But once he started to feel better, we started riding with the 450cc machine already. Yeah, he’s looking good and we are doing some good progress. He was in Rome and his Brother, Sacha was also in Rome before the Sardinia bootcamp. We are working almost every day to make everything good.
On Sacha Coenen…
I’ve always been watching Sacha before. Let’s say when he was racing with the 125cc. I always wanted him, I always wanted Lucas too. I’ve always liked them since many years. I’ve been speaking with KTM to take them and that maybe in the future I will have them in my team, here we are. I’m really pumped to start the 2025 season with them. I think that Sacha is really good. He’s really fast and he learns really quickly. He has a great motivation to win. I think he will show some good things this year. I’m pretty sure of that.
