Jake Nicholls and Ben Watson have agreed to stay with Roger Magee’s Hitachi-backed GP team, which is switching back to KTM after a year riding Husqvarnas. Nicholls will ride MXGPs and Watson MX2 GPs, and unlike last year when the squad didn’t go to all the long-haul races, they plan to contest the whole world championship. They’ll also race the British championship and the Redsand and Hawkstone pre-season International races.

The team gets backing from KTM and are the main UK KTM team, following the KTM-backed team run by Steve Turner folding at the end of 2016. The team retains its Hitachi backing and also gets support from Contract Furniture Group.

Watson missed lots of the 2016 season but Nicholls had a strong season, following 18 months of injuries previously. He won his first British championship overall at Desertmartin.

Nicholls, whose last race was at the Lille Supercross on a Husky, had his first ride on a pair of 2017 KTMs at his own track yesterday. They were the 125 and 250cc two-stroke long-term test bikes from MotoHead magazine! We’ll be doing a full feature on Nicholls, and you can see him in action ragging our little smokers, very soon in the FREE MotoHead magazine App December issue.

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