VOL. 50 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 17, 2013
Villopoto will have
his hands full
with a new crop
of young riders
coming up, but he
is still the favorite
to win the 2014
Supercross crown.
"
I'VE WON PRETTY MUCH
EVERYTHING THERE IS TO WIN,
SO I DON'T FEEL LIKE I HAVE
ANYTHING TO PROVE TO MYSELF
OR ANYONE ELSE.
sists that's actually not the case.
"No, I thought I had one more
lap," Villopoto says. "So, no,
I didn't at that point know that I
had missed it. I thought I had one
more lap to hit the Joker Lane.
But whatever, it's that race. It obviously sucks, but we don't race
that race all the time. It's not how
our racing normally is."
mistake and my foot slipped off
and that's why I ended up crashing. But I saw him do it and it was
quite a bit faster, so you have to
do it. You have to be able to step
up and do it."
When RV went down, he had
just missed the Joker Lane on
the final lap of the second race.
Most pundits believed he went
down because he realized he
just made a $900,000 mistake
by missing the Joker Lane. RV in-
P83
>>Staying Green
Villopoto's big-name predecessors all bounced between manufacturers during their racing careers. Ricky Carmichael started
with Kawasaki, then went to
Honda, and then Suzuki, in his 10
years at the top. Jeremy McGrath
started on Kawasakis, then went
to Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha and
then KTM for a short stint. James
Stewart started out with Kawasaki, then went to Yamaha, and now
Suzuki. Chad Reed started in the
USA with Yamaha, then went to
Suzuki, Kawasaki, Honda, and
now back to Kawasaki.
But Ryan Villopoto, if he does
indeed retire after the 2015 season, will have spent his entire career racing for Kawasaki. While
he loves his team, every time his
contract was up, he was entertaining offers, but the economy
"
at the top level of American MX
is probably just as responsible
for Villopoto staying green as the
quality of the team is.
"Basically, it's just kind of how
it worked out," Villopoto said.
"Kawasaki and everybody at Kawasaki have been really good to
me. We've obviously had a lot of
success and I think they obviously wanted to keep me around.
You have to come to a happy
medium. I could say I want the
world, but they can't produce
that. So you have to come to a
happy medium, and we've always
been able to do that. And I've
been happy with what the happy
medium is, and I think they are,
also. It just ended up working out
really well and it's a great team
together."
But with Yamaha lacking a true
factory team for most of RV's
450 career, and with KTM's connection to Ryan Dungey through
Roger DeCoster, Suzuki's lack of
budget and eventual commitment
to James Stewart, and Honda's
commitment to their own star
racers, the truth is that Villopoto
hasn't really had a lot of options
at contract time. So, it's likely
he'll end up a Kawasaki lifer, just
like another gnarly, short red-
