INTERVIEW
2016 GNC2 CHAMPION RYAN WELLS
P90
"When I met Rispoli they kind of showed me
the different side of racing," he said. "I never
saw the professional side of it. I never saw the
marketing side of it or getting sponsors. I was
just a kid riding a 65 and my dad bought me
some graphics off of eBay, or whatever, and
we made it look cool and that was it. We went
racing. They showed me the different side of it
and what it could potentially be."
That was basically it for Wells; he was bit by
the motorcycle-racing bug and there was no
looking back.
"My dad asked me if I wanted to play football,
baseball, he tried to get me to play slow pitch
and it was, 'nope, I want to race dirt bikes,'"
Wells said. "I got homeschooled in 10th grade
because I wanted to race dirt bikes. There was
never any doubt of what I wanted to do."
I THE DETOURS II
Wells stepped into the professional scene in
2012 with Weirbach Racing—the team that
had won the championship the year prior with
Mikey Martin—and hit the ground running with a
win straight away at round two in Daytona. The
road looked to be smooth, but it got rocky from
there.
"I was kind of setting myself up in a bad way," he
said. "It's tough to do that and then once you make
it, it's like you expect that of yourself. Then the fol-
lowing year I lost the championship by one point.
The year after that, I rode for factory KTM, and then
that was it. The following year, I did the whole thing
by myself."
Racing as a privateer is never easy. It's even more
challenging when there's not a lot of money in the
sport to begin with. It's translates to a lot of long
hours on the road by yourself—at 19 years old mind
(Above) After
clinching his
first GNC2 title
two rounds early
at his home
race at Rolling
Wheels Raceway
Park, Wells went
on to cap off
the year with a
dominant win
at the season
finale in Santa
Rosa.
