Filip Salac, Moto2 triumph at Silverstone: the latest of the few Czech heroes—remember them?

From the dawn of the World Championship to the present day: Salac’s Moto2 masterpiece is the latest of the rare Czech triumphs in history—let’s revisit them all.

Fortune favors the bold, but Filip Salac certainly fought like a lion to secure the first victory of his Grand Prix career. The one he took in Moto2 last Sunday at Silverstone, beyond the plot twist caused by Manuel Gonzalez’s blunder, will go down in history as the very first win for the young Czech rider of the American Racing Team, who now joins a very exclusive club. In fact, there aren’t many riders from the Czech Republic who have managed to win a GP in the World Championship—so few you could count them on one hand... Do you remember them? Let’s take a little trip through history.

Born in 1990 and long since retired from racing: he was the last Czech rider to win a Moto2 GP before Salac’s feat. Riding the Cardion AB Racing FTR (the team of his father, Karel Abraham, owner of the Brno circuit), he took his first and only victory in 2010, the inaugural season of the new class that had just replaced the historic 250cc. Despite missing three GPs due to a heavy head knock during the Brno round, that was his best year in the World Championship, with a podium in Japan and 10th place in the riders’ standings with 96 points.

We mentioned him because he was the first Czech rider to take a pole position in the World Championship (Moto2 2006, Italian GP). Born in 1985 in Prague and long retired from competition, he was also the first modern-era Czech to win a Grand Prix—actually two: in 2007 he triumphed first at the Chinese 125cc GP, already making history, and then doubled up at the end of the season in Australia with a second win in the small class of the World Championship. It was his best season ever, finishing 4th overall with 182 points. He deserves credit for ending a very long drought after the feats of the rider still considered the great legend for the Czech Republic—then Czechoslovakia—given the era in which he raced.

Four Grand Prix wins across 350cc and 500cc, and a runner-up title: no one else like him. Born in 1927 in Kochánky, Bohemia (then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic) and passed away in 2000 at the age of 72, he was the first—and for a very long time the only—rider from his country capable of winning in the World Championship. We have to go back to the 1950s and ’60s of the last century, when the World Speed Championship had only recently been officially founded (1949): in 1961, in 350cc with Jawa, the Prague-based manufacturer, came the first victories by a Czech rider, at the German and Swedish GPs. He would repeat in the same class at the 1965 Ulster GP, and finally take a 500cc win at the 1966 German GP.

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