A beautiful April afternoon validated the decision by Youthstream/FIM to hold the GP of Benelux later in the year, to ensure good weather. The track was looking stunning and a good crowd had turned up to watch what would end up being some superb racing.

MX2
With Saturday's qualifying races turning up some interesting results, the MX2 class would line up with Frenchman Nicolas Aubin with first gate pick, Shaun Simpson 2^nd, and rookie Loic Larrieu raising a few eyebrows by coming in 3^rd place.

When the gate dropped it was another youngster, Ceriel Klein Kromhof, who took the holeshot just ahead of Simpson and Aubin, but he wasn't able to hold them off for long as Simpson took charge and began opening up a lead that would never get challenged, eventually winning by almost 20 seconds.

Portuguese rider Rui Goncalves struggled to maintain his pace in the qualifying race but had no such trouble on Sunday, settling into a 2^nd place finish ahead of Italy's Davide Guarneri who held off a charging Zach Osborne and Nicolas Aubin who had to come up through the pack after a mistake on lap one.

In the second moto, it looked like there would be a repeat performance from Simpson as he quickly established a gap ahead of Goncalves and Aubin. However, unlike moto 1, Simpson's fitness was causing him a problem as earlier injuries had restricted the amount of time he was able to spend on the bike. Goncalves was first to take advantage, quickly overtaking and then pulling away before Aubin could react. Aubin did overtake Simpson who stuck it out for a podium finish and 2^nd overall. All the plaudits should go to Goncalves though as he became the first ever Portuguese GP winner and on a surface that isn't traditionally a favourite for the Mediterranean based riders.

The red plate still belongs to Gautier Paulin as even though he crashed a few times, he was still able to get a 5^th place overall.

MX1

I'd really love to be able to give a decent write-up about MX1 race 1, but words wouldn't do this race justice. Local hero Marc de Reuver got the holeshot ahead of Billy Mackenzie and that's the way it stayed for half of the race, but with about 15 minutes to go, all hell broke loose. Mackenzie started to fade, de Reuver crashed, David Philippaerts led for a couple of laps while battling Steve Ramon and while all this happening, Antonio Cairoli was gradually closing the gap on the leaders, eventually taking over the lead with three laps to go. De Reuver regained his composure to get 2^nd while Jonathan Barragan recovered from a 1^st turn crash to get all the way up into 3^rd place in an amazing ride.

While the second race wasn't quite as eventful as race 1, it still wasn't easy to predict the winner at the halfway mark. By that stage Ramon and Philippaerts had resumed their battle from race 1 with Ramon getting the better of the Italian on lap seven. Behind those two was Barragan who decided this was the time to make his move, overtaking both riders in a matter of a couple of laps. He wasn't the only one as Tanel Leok also got past both the 2008 title contenders. Further back, Cairoli and Belgian Kevin Strijbos had bad starts, but were rapidly taking positions as the Italian needed a 2^nd place for the overall. Only on the white flag lap did he realize he wouldn't be able to overtake his teammate Leok, so he eased it off so as not to risk his position on top of the MX1 class.