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/144092
INTERVIEW P98 STEVE RAPP In addition to racing, Rapp works full time as a commercial airline pilot. ferent teams… and even MotoGP on a CRT bike last year. All that in addition to flight training. "Yeah I mean everything's been difficult really since after 2008," he said. "I've been caught up doing… a lot of different things, just to kind of do what I needed to do. And then trying to do the training and the racing and all that stuff. So, yeah, it was very difficult. It took a lot of time and effort and focus… trying to divide my attention between a lot of different things, but I feel like it didn't affect my riding at all. Or anything from that aspect. But it was just something that had to be done. I didn't have a choice so I basically just did it." And so far for Rapp the 2013 season is going rather well. Joe Houpt, team owner of the Suburban Harley-Davidson team in the Vance & Hines Harley Davidson Series, offered Rapp the opportunity to come out and ride his bike at Daytona. Despite mechanical woes that took him out after leading the race, the first outing with the new team went well. Rapp also got the opportunity to fill in for the injured Dane Westby on the GEICO Honda in the Daytona 200 where he finished sixth. "I didn't really plan for the [Daytona] 200," Rapp said. "When Dane got hurt I talked to Chris and John Ulrich and they had me fill in for them... but I did that and that itself was kind of an unexpected start to the season." During the long gap between Daytona and the second round at Road America was when Rapp made the job change to Surf Air. While training with the new company in Dallas, he had to get creative with his scheduling to pull off racing at Road America. "Initially I thought it wouldn't be a big deal to get off for the weekend because I thought I had the weekend off anyway from training, but then I realized that I didn't and that I had to work," Rapp said. "Basically, I was in training Friday, Saturday of the Road America weekend. I was able to work my schedule out to where I could leave Saturday night from Dallas in order to get to Road America Saturday night. I knew I would miss both the practice and qualifying, but I had the Sunday morning qualifying for 20 minutes. And I figured, 'well at least worst case I can get some laps and just kind of wing it.' I didn't have any expectations really, I just went there with that intention." Rapp's last-minute Road America appearance on Sunday brought new meaning to taking your Harley out for a spin on your day off. He topped the morning qualifying session, which grid-