VOL. 50 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 17, 2013
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P167
I WENT BACK TO THE TRUCK AND HAD
MY HAND X-RAYED, AND THEY GAVE ME A
SHOT, BUT I TOLD THEM, 'I DON'T WANT TO
KNOW IF IT'S BROKEN OR NOT, BECAUSE IT
DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.
(Above) Wil Hahn is one of the
most likable racers in the pits. Even
his competitors were happy for him
when he wrapped up the 250 East
Supercross Championship.
(Top left) It was a long and
emotional road to Hahn's first 250
Supercross title.
cian Kristian] Kibby and all those
guys over there. I think the deciding factor for me was the fact that
it was a true factory team. I'm not
taking anything away from Troy's,
because my bike was awesome
at Troy's, but I felt like, at the
time, we really lacked testing [at
the Troy Lee team]. The team has
evolved since then and there's a
lot more testing now, but I think
that was true at the time. So, I felt
that with Factory Connection being a suspension company, we
would test a lot."
And that was truly the deciding
factor. Even though the GEICO
Honda team tends to have deeper pockets, money wasn't a deciding factor for Hahn.
months later at the RedBud National. But Hahn has always been
more natural at Supercross. The
Nationals aren't as much "his
thing."
In 2012, a crash at the seasonopening Anaheim 1 Supercross
cost him what seemed to be an
assured top finish, then he went
down at the test track between
rounds one and two and fractured his right hip, knocking him
out of that series as well.
In 2013, though, Hahn made it
into the 250cc East Series relatively healthy. He landed third at
the East Series opener behind
Dean Wilson and Blake Wharton,
then finally got the breakthrough
he had worked years for - a wire-
"
"No bullshit, Troy matched
everything to the penny," Hahn
says. "It was something that was
just purely what my heart told me
to do."
BREAKTHROUGH
The change over to the GEICO Honda team seemed to be
cursed, though, despite the
genuine intentions on all sides of
the deal. At Anaheim 1 in 2011, after showing tons of promise and
speed at the test track in the offseason, Hahn went down hard in
practice and fractured a vertebra
in his upper back, between his
shoulder blades. It was a huge
setback.
Hahn returned to action six
