Maxime Renaux on his 2025 MXGP ‘serving’, and riding through injury: “It’s like going to [motocross] war”
The factory Yamaha star tucks into the adversity of 2025, the frustrations of racing through physical setbacks and his future
By Adam Wheeler. Photos by Jordi Wheeler (schooled by Ray Archer). Portrait by Ray Archer.
Maxime Renaux is working his way through a plate of salmon and pasta. It’s Saturday evening at the German Grand Prix, round ten of twenty, and the 25-year-old, to his eternal credit, is not letting the matter of a meal get in the way of an interview while inside the bright Yamaha hospitality. The tri-lingual Frenchman seems eager to explain a campaign that has underdelivered in terms of results but has overdelivered in outright willingness to not be undone by injury for the third season in a row.
Aside from victory in the opening Grand Prix in Argentina, Renaux has not seen a podium ceremony since. He has swapped the sweet aroma of champagne for the bitter smell of hospital disinfectant. Max somehow competed at round two in Spain despite breaking two metacarpals in his right hand through a training crash a few days beforehand. “I had surgery on Tuesday night and I was racing on Saturday; that was tough.” A consequence of his weakened state meant he lost grip on the handlebars during round four in Sardinia. “I hurt my lungs and broke some ribs,” he recalls. He gritted his teeth through round five in Italy, somehow taking a 6th place overall and then went to Switzerland where he hit the Frauenfeld soil and has been managing a sore hip through GPs in Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and Latvia. “I’m still struggling from that last one and it’s still not healed. It’s pretty serious but not dangerous. It’s been getting better and I don’t feel pain anymore. But there is inflammation, some pain management sometimes: it’s like going to war.”
All this drama follows a badly broken foot in 2023, the repercussions of which washed out most of 2024. It’s been a hard run for the 2021 MX2 world champ and 2022 MXGP rookie of the year, but Renaux is exasperated with the debilitation, operations and setbacks.
So, he carries on.
“I could not accept it,” he says shuffling pieces of pasta around the plate, and of the initial hand fractures after Argentina due to a tumble through a blown-out rut. “I was like ‘f**k, my championship is done…’ but ten minutes afterwards I thought ‘no, this is not happening, I will drive wherever I can to have surgery’ and went to Belgium, got it done and was then racing the clock. I finished 2nd in the quali race in Spain and I fist-pumped the air. I watched the race afterwards and Paul [Malin, TV commentator] was like ‘it’s not usual to see Max pumping the air like this after a second place’ but honestly it felt like a win with the condition I was in. It was crazy. You can maybe do that for one or two motos but when the crashes and injuries add-up then you lose control [more easily].”
Jeffrey Herlings has been labouring through a pre-season-inside-a-season and Tim Gajser is out for another couple of months, therefore MXGP has become a regular twosome between Romain Febvre and Lucas Coenen with a few names popping up for podium spots. Herlings is now back in winning ways after success in Germany and then Latvia. At the time of writing Renaux is 4th in the championship and 15 points from the top three. Is 2025 now about a bronze medal? Or, psychologically, is there a lot more to it?
“I feel like I’ve had my part of the s**tcake,” he says with full conviction. “Hopefully I won’t get any more pieces of it. I feel I can be injury-free for the rest of the season and just build up…because I was in such good condition pre-season. I’m still injured now but I can perform OK. I’m not 20th, I’m around the top five. I’m coming back towards 3rd place in the championship and, yes, that’s the goal to reach. Then get back to my level and chase GP podiums. I’m still here because I’m convinced I can do something good towards the end of the season.”
Motocross has a horrible delectation for suddenly putting the best talent and the fittest riders in hospital but the subject of why it has happened so much to #959 in the past three years is a pertinent subject. Bad decisions? Bad Luck? Or the price of doggedness?
“There have been many…and I’m trying to work on it,’ he confesses. “I don’t believe in bad luck and I’m trying to manage what I do in the best way possible. The last two years have been about one injury and that was the foot which that was out of my control [he needed more surgical procedures]. The hand and the hip are major…but, I guess, being stubborn and not giving up is a quality that can sometimes bite you in the arse. It is not easy to find the right balance. I have a winning mentality; it is not easy for me to be passed, for example. Switzerland might have been a bit of an ‘ego crash’ in trying to chase after Romain. I’d had a wake-up call two corners before but I’m a winner and I want to eat everybody on track,” a slice of salmon gets stabbed. “But…I was not physically ready to do that. I’m just trying to hold myself down right now and see what is available to me.”
Maxime’s condition could arguably have eaten into development of the Monster Energy Yamaha YZ450FM. Teammate Jago Geerts has been visibly low on confidence and that’s left Calvin Vlaanderen to do most of the heavy lifting. MXGP has not seen much of that Yamaha blue and black at the front of the field in terms of holeshots. “We obviously need to work, and we are in the right direction now,” Renaux concedes. “We were getting dropped at the beginning of the season and we have some new things coming up which is better. Chassis-wise I am happy but motocross is about the rider and how you attack the track and I can’t do it the way I would like. I am just doing it enough to score good points and be consistent. I can be smooth but cannot send it. Again, it’s hard to accept.”
What is easier to accept is his future. Renaux showed he has the capability to ace Grands Prix with his 2-1 scorecard in Argentina and his mentality and attitude is clearly not an issue for any factory team. In 2026 he will again steer a Yamaha, and that provides a strand of calm in his hectic and turbulent sporting life, especially with big names like Gajser and Herlings stirring interest.
“We don’t know how many people are going to stay and where,” he comments, and in reference to the uncertainty over KTM’s footprint in the paddock next year. “It is a very tricky situation for anyone who is free this year because it is going to be a big, market. So, it’s something I have out of my head but I’m also looking around at who goes where. It’s interesting. Hopefully we will still have a lot of factory rides. It’s good to have competition and KTM is one of the strong brands in the paddock, like Yamaha, Honda and Kawasaki.”
Maxime clears his plate. Now he just needs to do the same for his slate. And then dream of dessert.