Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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2020 AMA HARE & HOUND CHAMPION DALTON SHIREY P110 Interview down there. Like a hare and hound you can push it, you can push yourself and get a little sketchy here and there. Down there you can't really push because if you push and hit the ground, you're freaking miles away from anything. It could be 10 hours, 15 hours for a helicopter ride out of there to get back to a hospital in the United States to get checked up so you definitely back it down and ride more conservatively." NEXT UP Shirey, however, has no plans to add a full-time run at SCORE—three series in the U.S. will keep him busy enough—though if he got the funding for the SCORE World Desert Championship series, he wouldn't rule it out. "I really want to go down there and win the 1X plate. My dad has gone down there and won his class multiple times and got, like, fifth overall and never really won it overall, I don't think. I don't think he won the championship down there to get the 1X. I really want our last name down there on it one year. I don't know—it'd probably take me a couple years to get it so it'd probably be more towards the end of my career, I would say. Right now, I'm really trying to get NGPC and WORCS and hare and hounds done." He emphasizes, "For sure I want to back up my hare and hound championship and make sure no one says it was a fluke deal. "Then I really want to get myself an NGPC title. I feel like I'm a year out from that one. I'm definitely going to try my best for next year, but I feel like in 2022 I'll have a better shot because this year I kind of sacrificed the GP stuff to benefit me more in the hare and hounds." As Shirey sees it, he'll need to add a little speed to his reper- toire. "Those guys like Zach Bell and Dante [Oliveira] and all those guys, they are such good sprint- ers right out of the gate; they just go for it. Sometimes I have to kind of work into it just because the weekend before at a hare and hound, how I approach hare and hounds you're more mellow. I feel like if you're super-aggressive at a hare and hound race, the desert will lash out at you and bite, so you have to be more smooth, calm, smart, really paying atten- tion to the course markings." He recalls, "It's definitely a big challenge. When I first led my first race ever in the desert, I was panicking because I lost sight of a ribbon. You have to learn not to panic when you lose the ribbon. You're like, 'Okay, like every other time you lose the ribbon, go back and find it.'" With the hare and hound championship under his belt, Shirey believes he's better prepared for the type of terrain and racing he'll face undertaking three series. "Now I can focus more on the GPs and bal- ance it out better. Learning how to balance between the two elements like GPs and hare and hounds is kind of hard because you've got to go trail riding one day and you've got to do motos another day. "I don't know. It's kind of hard to get those two balanced a little bit. Only two people I've seen who've done it so far, and they're legends in the sport. Kurt Caselli, he's won a hare and hound championship and a WORCS title in the same year! Then you've got Gary Sutherlin who did the same thing—a hare and hound title and WORCS crown in the same year. Those are the only two people I've ever seen do that and I really want to put my name along with them!" At 22 years old, time is on his side—now that he's no longer scared of dirt bikes. CN Dalton Shirey: 2020 AMA Hare & Hound National Champion