Gábor Talmácsi

Gábor Talmácsi (born (1981-05-28)28 May 1981 in Budapest, Hungary) is a Hungarian former professional motorcycle racer. He was the 2007 Grand Prix motorcycle racing 125cc World Champion, and he is thus the first Hungarian to win a road racing World Championship. He has a younger brother, Gergő, who is also a motorcycle racer. Due to a leg injury suffered in 2013, Talmácsi has retired from racing professionally. After retiring from racing he set up his own team, Talmácsi Racing which competes in the European Superstock 600 Championship and races with the Honda CBR600RR.

Early career

Gábor competed in boxing, but started racing on minibikes made by his father at the age of 4. After successful seasons in the Hungarian and the European championship, he had his first full season in the World Championship in 2001, with the Racing Service team, on a private Honda bike. That year he scored 34 points, which earned him a place the next year on the Italjet team, but the change wasn't a real success, and during the season he had to switch to the PEV ADAC Sachsen team, where he could ride a Honda again. This change worked a bit better, and in Brazil, he scored his best result that far with a fourth place.

In 2003 he signed for the reigning world champion Exalt Cycle Aprilia team, but did not reach the success he expected, and often felt he was given not the same bike and treatment by the team as his German teammate, Steve Jenkner. Gábor wanted to be a team's leading pilot, so he decided to join the factory Malaguti team for the next season.However, the bike was not competitive at all and his best finish was a 7th place in Portugal. Nevertheless, his results still attracted the attention of teams like Derbi, Gilera, Honda and KTM.

2005: First Podium and Win

Joining for 2005 the Red Bull KTM team gave him the real breakthrough, getting his first victory after a last lap fall from teammate Mika Kallio and Héctor Faubel in Mugello. He scored two others: at Assen and Qatar - the latter became infamous for his last lap overtaking of Kallio. With four races to go the Finn still had a real chance to beat Thomas Lüthi for the title, Gábor only mathematical, so the team asked him to help his teammate scoring as many points as possible. But after safely leading during the whole race, at the finish Talmácsi overtook Kallio, claiming at the post race press conference he thought they still had one lap to go. He had already a contract offered by the manufacturer to race their factory 250 cc bike the forthcoming season, but after this the offer has been withdrawn, giving the bikes later to Manuel Poggiali and Hiroshi Aoyama. The decision might have been inspired by the fact that Kallio was beaten by Lüthi in the title-chase by only five points — the difference in the championship points gained by the first and second riders. Gábor finished the season in third place in the standings.

2006: at Humangest Honda

Inspired by the fact that the last three world champion in the class rode a Honda, he accepted the offer of Humangest Honda team to ride a fully factory bike for them. But the Japanese manufacturer did not develop almost a thing on their 125 cc bike for the new season, so Aprilia had a huge advantage, which could be seen in the season's results. Álvaro Bautista became world champion easily, his only real opponent being Kallio on the KTM, and sometimes his own teammates. Talmácsi fought a season-best third place in Brno, his "home" Grand Prix, but that was the most he could get out of his bike.

2007: Winning the World Championship at Aspar Aprilia

Season line-up

Before the end of the season, he was given an offer from Jorge "Aspar" Martínez's team to ride one of their bikes in 2007. Team Aspar was arguably the best team in the class in 2007: they gave the world champion and the runner-up riders and also won the teams' competition.

Talmácsi raced with a previously developed Aprilia engine, the so-called RSW, while his Spanish teammates, Héctor Faubel and Sergio Gadea used the new RSA engine which proved to be a bit faster but less reliable than the older one. Mattia Pasini's 2007 season demonstrated the low reliability of the engine with his motor problems which forced him to retire from many races in the beginning of the season. This may have cost him the world championship title, because later he showed great competitiveness (9 pole positions and 4 wins). The only RSA rider not having suffered serious mechanical problems was Héctor Faubel. His RSA Aprilia bike proved to be very effective in winning races by overtaking his opponents after the last corner of the races (e.g. in Qatar, Italy, the Czech Republic and Portugal).

Race history

The season started very positively for Talmácsi. After a very successful testing period, he started with a second place in the opening race of Qatar, then he won the Spanish GP of Jerez overtaking Lukáš Pešek of Derbi before the finish line. On the third race held at Istanbul Park Circuit he ended fifth after a small incident with Raffaele de Rosa, but could increase his lead in the World Championship, due to his opponents finishing behind him (Héctor Faubel suffered a clash from de Rosa at one of the Italian's aggressive manoeuvres). On his 100th GP in Shanghai, China, he had some smaller technical problems with his bike due to which he could not achieve the podium, arriving fourth. This cost him losing his championship lead to Lukáš Pešek who grabbed his maiden win on the race. In the next two races he could not get to the podium and arrived again in fourth place. In the Catalan GP of Barcelona his two main rivals by that time, Faubel and Pešek crashed into each other whereas Talmácsi arrived second, thus returning to the rostrum after Jerez and again leading the world championship by 13 points. However, in the next grand prix at Donington Park, UK, he could not finish the race due to a motor problem. In Assen he arrived third behind Héctor Faubel.

The German GP at the Sachsenring was the race most dominantly won by Talmácsi in 2007 with a pole position, fastest lap of the race and a formidable advantage throughout the whole grand prix. In his "home grand prix" in Brno, Czech Republic (there were about 30,000 Hungarian supporters there) his performance appeared to be quite dominant with a pole position, however in the race he could not ride as fast as expected and in the tough battle at the end of the race he achieved fourth place whereas Faubel won. The San Marinese GP at Misano was a dramatic one and caused some controversy. In the penultimate lap of the race the Italian Simone Corsi, Héctor Faubel and Gábor Talmácsi (who had some illness throughout the weekend and wasn't in a perfect physical state) were battling for second place (the race was led by Mattia Pasini). Corsi and Faubel crashed while Talmácsi could keep going and finished in second place, again leading the championship before Faubel, who did not score after arriving in 17th place.

The Portuguese GP was another slipstream victory for Héctor Faubel, overtaking Talmácsi after the last corner. In Motegi, Japan the race in wet conditions was won by Pasini with Talmácsi arriving second and Faubel third. The Spaniard was satisfied with his performance which was probably his best ever in a rainy race. The lowest finishing position of the whole season (not calculating the United Kingdom where his engine problem impeded him from finishing), 8th place, met Talmácsi in Australia, where he had problems with finding the right setup for the new suspension of his motorcycle. Before that, he showed great stability: his lowest position was 5th in the third race of the season, Turkey, and even if he won less races than Faubel and Pasini, he was leading the championship. After the race he kept only a single point of his lead against Héctor Faubel, who finished third after Lukáš Pešek and Joan Olivé.

At Sepang, Malaysia, penultimate race of the season, Faubel had pole position with Talmácsi starting second. However, in the race the Hungarian was leading from the end of the first lap until the end of the race with a significant advantage over the other riders. Faubel arrived third after the Japanese KTM rider, Tomoyoshi Koyama (winner at Montmeló). Talmácsi's Valencian teammate was complaining about the bike and had to finish the race knowing that the Hungarian will have a 10-point advantage at the last race of the season in Cheste, Valencia. In Valencia the race started with Talmácsi in pole and in an absolutely tense race where Faubel tried everything, the Hungarian arrived second behind his rival and thus became the 2007 world champion, the first motorcycle world champion of Hungary, and the centre-east region of Europe. The party to celebrate his success back in Budapest was known as "Talmageddon". He was named 2007 Hungarian Sportsman of the Year for his achievements.

2008

Talmácsi signed a two-year contract with Team Aspar to race in their 125cc team in 2008 with an RSA Aprilia motorcycle, and unconditionally move to the 250cc team of Jorge "Aspar" Martínez in 2009. 2008 started badly, but he hit form to move up to 3rd in the championship — despite a wrist injury at Indianapolis — by winning 3 races and scoring 9 podium finishes.

2009

Gábor Talmácsi started the season in the 250cc class (his best result being 4th in the wet Japanese Grand Prix), but left Aspar's Balatonring Team after three races following a row over image rights. Having gained the backing of Hungarian oil company MOL Group, Talmácsi moved to the Team Scot MotoGP team starting with the sixth race of the season at Circuit de Catalunya. First he joined the team as the team-mate of Yuki Takahashi, but since Laguna Seca, Talmácsi was the one and only rider of Team Scot. He scored his first championship point in Germany, and he finished ahead of notable riders Chris Vermeulen, Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden in Donington Park, in wet conditions.

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