VOL. 56 ISSUE 1 JANUARY 8, 2019 P103
Would you say your riding
style or your approach to racing
changed or evolved from your
first championship to this one?
Definitely! I remember back in
the day, I would just go as hard as
I could. I would just want to win
so badly. Only having one bike for
the whole 2018 season, I worried
about mechanical failures—not
really like mechanical failures,
but the bike was just more tired,
I'd say, so I didn't have as fresh of
equipment this year. The chassis
gets tired over time and it doesn't
handle as good.
My dream since I came back
and since before has always
been the same: it's to go to
Dakar. So every time I line up, it's
like, "If you're going to go to Da-
kar, you've got to finish 16 days."
If you can't get through the day,
then you're not going to make it
to the finish [there].
So every time, I just think of
that and it's just another day.
Also, I've got to go to work on
Monday so I don't want to really
get hurt!
There were days this season
when I wasn't really feeling it
and I just took it easy—not take
it easy but be patient with the
day—and there were days when I
was feeling it and went for it and
maybe took a couple chances,
but in the end it worked out. If
you kind of go with your gut out
there, it pays dividends.
Readers will wonder what
you did during the eight years
between your champion-
ships. Where were you? What
did you do?
After I stopped riding with
JCR, I tried to race some
[SCORE] Baja and stuff on my
own. I never really got a full
series of hare and hound nation-
als since the first championship
I had. I was signed up in 2011 to
do the whole series, but I had
some injuries that held me back
from a couple rounds.
After that I just went out in '13
and raced two races and won
both of those. I haven't been
back since, really.
I just feel like after '13 and
the Baja 1000 when Kurt Ca-
selli was killed, I wanted to get
back into it, but I just had to
take a break. I think my head
