Sidecarcross World Championship
The sport is predominantly amateur, with only the top-riders, like former world champions Ben Adriaenssen, Daniël Willemsen and Etienne Bax being professional.[1][2] The Sidecarcross World Championship, first held in 1980 and organised by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, is an annual competition.Races are held on the same tracks as solo motocross but the handling of the machines differs as sidecars do not lean.[8][9] The 2016 season champions were the Belgian–Dutch combination Jan Hendrickx and Ben van den Bogaart, having won their first World Championship together.[3][10][11] In the 2015 season, 56 teams finished in the points in the competition, with the drivers hailing from fourteen European nations.From the 1980 season onwards, it carried the title World Championship, even though, in practice, virtually all drivers and passengers are European, except for a small number of riders from the US and Australia, and all races are held in Europe.The first edition of the world championship in 1980 saw the only German victory to date with the combination Reinhard Böhler/Siegfried Müller taking out the title.Unlucky runner-up in the three seasons from 1981 to 1983 were the Germans Josef Brockhausen/Hubert Rebele, missing out quite narrowly and retiring in 1983 after the third attempt, as did Bollhalder, but as the world champion.Christoph Hüsser/Andreas Hüsser won the titles in 1988 and 1989 and continued to race after that until 1996, never coming close to another world championship again.Benny Janssen/Tiny Janssen became the last to win one championship only when the finished on top in 1990, beating the German team Michael Garhammer/Ralf Haas by only 13 points and ending eight years of Swiss domination.After this, the world championship returned to Switzerland with Andreas Fuhrer/Adrian Käser equaling the record of four titles in a row from 1993 to 1996 and then retiring from the competition.1999, saw the tightest race ever when only one point at the end of the season separated the Willemsen brothers from the Latvian title holders.[17] In 2000, Kristers Serģis/Artis Rasmanis came back, beating Daniël Willemsen/Sven Verbrugge by 20 points, the last tight race to date.In 2009, the title went to a Belgian driver for the first time, Joris Hendrickx winning the championship, with his Latvian passenger Kaspars Liepiņš.In 2010, the title returned to the Netherlands with Daniël Willemsen taking out his eighth championship, together with Gertie Eggink as his passenger.Willemsen won a historic tenth World Championship in 2012, finishing five points ahead of Etienne Bax, despite having to exchange his passenger twice.Adriaenssen and his Dutch passenger Ben van den Bogaart also won the 2014 championship while Etienne Bax came second for third consecutive time.Bax finally won the competition for the first time in 2015, with Kaspars Stupelis as his passenger who had already been World Champion in 2003 and 2004 with Daniël Willemsen.