Quiz Answer: Who won Motocross Grands Prix for 6 Different Manufacturers?

Thanks to all those who commented on our social media Quiz post – this one had your heads itching, but several got it right, so here’s a quick review of the man who did it and, at the end, a table of all those who won on three or more brands, just to maybe answer some of your queries!

Words: Ben Rumbold, Featured Image: Alex Hodgkinson / KTM Media Library

Yes, it was Yves Demaria! Winner of 17 Grands Prix, plus 20 MX3 ones! I have a problem acknowledging the MX3 class but Yves (pronounced EEEV DeMAARee-yaa), previously a bit of a nearly man whose consistency could not match his obvious talent, flourished in this branch of Motocross to win three world titles in four years.

He turned from a title challenger in the 125cc class for Suzuki, where he finished 2nd in 1993 to Pedro Tragter, into a crazily-fast 250cc Pepsi Honda pilot, where he won 6 of the last 8 GPs of 1994 under the tutelage of Roger DeCoster, who briefly switched to the GP series for that season. His first win on the bike was at Foxhill, and with no championship pressure he romped to those wins for 3rd in the series whilst Greg Albertyn & Stefan Everts fought it out for the title.

He was nicknamed “The Fly”, and a French friend pronounced it “Tefli” which Yves thought good enough to put on his race pants, and he was signed up to Michele Rinaldi’s Chesterfield Yamaha squad, but after claiming a double win at round three’s Swiss GP he crashed out of the series until the penultimate round, when he won a moto at Suzuka in Japan as Stefan closed in on his first 250cc World crown.

With a lack of consistency limiting to a single wet GP win in San Marino during 1996, he went to a private Honda in 1997 but the Italian Martin team fell apart. He got signed up to Jan de Groot’s factory JHK Kawasaki team as a replacement for the injured Sebastien Tortelli. He promptly took a double moto win at the super-fast Indonesian circuit of Bandung! He stayed on the team in 1998 but whilst Seb won an awesome title battle with Everts, Demaria struggled to perform as he failed to take a moto win for the first time in 8 years.

The flighty Frenchman then took to the 500cc class onboard a four-stroke Husqvarna, the proper Italian variant before KTM bought the brand, and immediately won his first GP on it!  Always a hard-pack specialist, that first round was on home turf at Castelnau-de-Levis and he won a tie-break with another multi-brand winner and class newcomer, Alessandro Puzar!  The Italian would never won another 500 GP moto, but Yves won two more on Czech, and then Slovakian, hard-pack. Again, though, consistency lost him a title shot and he collected 4th in the Championship for the fourth time in his career.

He went back to 250 GPs for 2000, paired with Pit Beirer on the Skittles Yamaha, and won a weird Brazilian GP with 4-2 motos, before a double win at Namur showed some vintage Demaria speed. Still he couldn’t string a championship challenge together, and 2001 was another fruitless campaign and as he turned 30 in January 2002, he looked to be a spent force.  However, he found life in the 500cc class with KTM, and became a challenger out of the blue in 2002 when he briefly broke the Everts/Smets domination of the series with a win at Castiglione dal Lago in Italy. That was the one that made him a GP winner on six different brands of motorcycle. He nearly won two in a row but for a last-corner pass from Stefan Everts in Austria that drove KTM team manager Kurt Nicoll to such a rage that he threw rocks at an advert hoarding!

From there, he stayed with KTM for four years as the 500cc class was cast aside from the MXGP circus to become a more old-school series called MX3. It was there that the Fly finally became a World Champion, finishing on a funky white Yamaha in 2007.

So there it is! Congrats to all who got it right and thanks for taking part! Here’s a quick chart of those who won on three or more brands, just so you can see where your guess finished. It’s in order of number of brands, then the earliest to win! So the mighty Sten Lundin was the first to win on three brands back in 1965, Dave Strijbos was the first to win on a fourth brand in 1990, and Alessandro Puzar was the first to win on a fifth in 1997.  If your guess isn’t there then I’m sorry but you were way off!  Join us for the next one!