Gábor Talmácsi

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Gábor Talmácsi (born May 28, 1981 in Budapest, Hungary) is a professional motorcycle racer, racing in 2007 for the MVA Master Aspar team in the motorcycle world championship's 125cc category, on a works Aprilia bike.

Gábor started racing on minibikes made by his father at the age of 4. After succesful 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, what earned him a place next year in the Italjet team, but the change wasn't a real succes, and during the season he had to switch for 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 didn't reach the succes 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. But the bike was not competitive at all, his best finish was a 7th place in Portugal. But his results still attracted the attention of teams like Derbi, Gilera, Honda and KTM.

Joining for 2005 the Red Bull KTM team gave him the real brakethrough, getting his first victory after a last lap fall from teammate Mika Kallio and Hector Faubel in Mugello. He scored two other: at Assen and Qatar - the latter became infamous for his last lap overtaking of Kallio. With four races to go the Finnish 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offered by the manufacturer to race their factory 250cc bike the forthcoming season, but after this the offer has been withdrawn, giving the bikes later to Manuel Poggiali and Hiroshi Aoyama.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 point - and between first and second places in the motorcycle Grand Prix scoring system there is a five point difference... Gábor finished the season in third place in the standings.

Inspired by the fact that the last three world champion in the class rode a Honda, he has accepted the Humagest Honda team's offer to ride a fully factory bike for them. But the Japanese manufacturer did not develope almost a thing on their 125cc bike for the new season, so Aprilia had a huge advantage, which could be seen in the seasons 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.

Before the end of the season, he was given an offer from Jorge Martínez "Aspar"'s team, to ride one of their bikes in 2007, which seems to be the best available ride in the class at the moment.