With five World motocross championships each, Tim Gajser and Jeffrey Herlings will head into the 2025 MXGP championship with a lot of history between them. Of course, it was all the way back in 2015, when Herlings led the MX2 World championship points, only to crash out, as Gajser came back from being around 150 points down in the championship mid-season to take his first World championship.

Gajser had more or less come from nowhere to be crowned the MX2 champion, but he wasn’t about to sit back on his laurels and enjoy this new success, no, he moved to the MXGP class and quickly took World title number two. In that 2016 season, making his 450 debut, Gajser beat another legend in Antonio Cairoli, ending the season nearly 100 points up on the Italian.

As for Herlings, after the disappointments of 2015, he came back to dominate the MX2 class, winning the championship with more than 100 points on second placed man, Jeremy Seewer. Everyone awaited the 2017 season when both Herlings and Gajser would go head-to-head, but unfortunately, Herlings was injured in the off-season and Gajser had multiple injuries through his title defence. It was Cairoli who took his ninth and final World title, while Herlings finished second and Gajser fifth.

Then came 2018, a season Herlings dominated all his opposition, winning his fourth World title and beating Cairoli by more than 150 points. Gajser, again suffering injuries came home fourth in the title, but he was about to put on run of victories in 2019 and 2020 that would stamp him as one of the all-time greats.

In 2019 the HRC man won the title by 202 points, ahead of Jeremy Seewer, as again, Herlings struggled with major injuries and finished down in 19th place in the MXGP points standings and for “The Bullet”, 2020 wasn’t much better. As Gajser won his fourth World motocross championship, and beat Seewer by 102 points, Herlings finished in 12th place, well low on his rightful position. The Dutchman had won four of the first six GPs, but then didn’t race another round after it was again an injury that saw him end his season in the back of an ambulance.

All great champions return from defeat and sure enough, in 2021, Herlings won his fifth World motocross championship in one of the all-time closest seasons in the sports history. Herlings, Romain Febvre and Gajser went into the final round of the season, all capable of winning the title, but it was Herlings who showed great resolve and took out the championship.

What has been a major part of his career, Herlings was again injured in the pre-season and failed to race a single round of the 2022 season, while Gajser scored his fifth World title and this time 116 points ahead of Seewer, who had become something of a second man in line, behind the two legends. A young kid names Jorge Prado finished third in 2022, but he was about to take over the sport.

Sure enough, both Gajser and Herlings suffered injuries in 2023, with Prado winning the title, his third after already being crowned MX2 World champion on two occasions. A year later and while both Gajser and Herlings failed to pick up any major injuries, it was Prado again, who showed the two legends the way, winning his fourth World championship.

Now, as we head into the 2025 season, we have these two five-time World champions again lining up and both have a huge opportunity to capture a sixth World motocross championship and join the great Joel Robert on the all-time list of World champions.

In another note, Gajser, who is on 49 GP wins, will probably also join Robert on 50 GP wins at some point in 2025, something to look forward to, while Herlings might want to add to his 107 GP victories. Who gets the title, well, going by their past, it would go either way and enough reason to watch the 2025 MXGP championship, from the first round in Argentina, to the last in Australia.