Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127661
You just men tioned eating after the race with the other racers . Is th e camaraderie the best thing about you r new sport? I think off-road has a tigh ter group of riders. The reason why is th a t th e g uys ar en't highly paid , like in mo to cros s. Wh en you're Jeremy McGrath or Mike LaRocco, you're ge tting paid a ton of money to race, and you don't need to ta lk to the other guys about what happened you get to see it on video. Then there's a lot of psyching each other ou t going on also. So are you saying that the offro ad guys d on ' t p la y mind games with each other? Well, I'd say that Fred Andrews and Scott Summers are the only two who are trying to p lay the psyche game with each other. For the most part, all of us can sit down and talk and joke about what we 've gone through or ridden over. It's pretty relaxed. If Randy Hawkins happens to ride the fastest on a certain day, then we're all proud of him . If Steve Hatch rides better, then we're proud of h im. It's a give and take - some days you're gonna be riding faster th an everyone else, some days it'll be another that's not all of it. You still have to be in good physical shape and you have to have your bike working good. Luckily, I have a good ride with Suzuki Off-Road, an d they handle the mechanical part of it. What do you feel you ne ed to wo rk on to become fast er off-road? There's a lot of things that I need to get working on - like learning to go over stuff the first time correctly. It seems as if I get caught up looking a t the lines that I need to avoid. When there's logs or branches in the way, I start looking at them think ing, 'Man, I better stay away from th a t,' bu t I really need to get my eyes back (to) loo king where I want to go. A lot of times my eyes will still be on the nasty stuff and I'll go straight for it. I'm learning so mu ch, b ut at the same time I'm ha ving a lot of fun. Is there anything about racing off-road that you haven't found to your liking? Well, th e bigge st bummer is th at at a motocross or supercross, when my feet go flying and I do a big save, everyone gets to see it. When I come back in from the track, I don't have to remind anyone of it, there's always someone reminding me about it. In off-road, I'll be ou t in the middle of the trail with no one in sight, and my feet will go flying and I'll go out through the tules, comp le tely off the trail, and save it - but then there's no one there to see it. Have you been having many of those episod es? (Laughs) Well, yeah. Generally, I save it, but I've had a couple of pretty good getoffs also. It's funny because you're out in the midd le of the sticks doing these big near get-offs! Then you come back in and have a million tales to tell. Usually at supper, you're sitting there talking with the other guys saying, 'Oh my God, did you hit th a t one log?' And everyone can us ually relate because we all hit the sa me thing. guy. So far, I haven't gotten there ye t, bu t hopefully I will. When did you first think about racing off-road? Well, that goes way back. When I was a sup port ride r for Team 'Green in 1981, I wanted to hi t the Natio nals, but my d ad said that he would like to su ppo rt me in end uros rather than motocross. Well, I wa nted to try to make a career out of racing, and it's hard to make a career out of racing off-road unless you have a lot of connections somewhere. Off-road is a lot harder to make a living at than motocross, so I decided to try racing motocross. Since my family owned a motorcycle dealership, we did have a lot of avenues open to us . I've been able to ride motocross, off-road, supercross and trials. I just happened to race motocross. Have yo u, in fact, been competin g in off-road even ts all along? Well, although I really like the Suzuki MX contracts that I had - they paid me a great deal of money and I have a lot to be thankful for - they wanted me to only race motocross - no off-road and no trials on the side in the off-season. I can see where they were coming from; they didn't want me to get hurt doing an enduro when they were paying me to race motocross. I understand that, and I can respect them for that, but, deep down, my heart was yearning to enjoy all aspects of off-roading. . ...... ..... ~ ~ 7