On The Pegs VOL . 4 ISSUE 12 - DECEMBER 2020 25
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MPRO YAMAHA
Tell us what led up to the Am Pro Yamaha deal . Well , It came about and things started moving . It ’ s tough . As a racer , I kind of build a career based on me and avoiding the factory rides . I made better money doing what I was doing . It was tough to decide whether I wanted to go with a factory team or not . We ’ re winning . I like winning . I think it took me until now to realize that I need a good team to win with . I feel like when I was with the KTM team , I wasn ’ t mature enough to win . Then the last four years I think I ’ ve definitely had what it takes to win . I just haven ’ t had a team that wanted to win until Yamaha . I think we lucked into that first win . Just the stars lined up . I rode really well . The bike worked , everything meshed for that first win and it made the whole team hungry . So now everybody wants to win . I think it ’ s going to be a really good fit moving forward .
I think the smartest thing you did all year was buy that Kawasaki and go out and prove to people that you ’ re fast enough to win on anything and a team is going to have to come after you . You ’ re not going to go begging to a team . Yeah . That was the tough part . I had actually turned down some offers . My wife almost wanted to kill me whenever I was turning down offers but I told her , it ’ s not right . They ’ re paying a seventh-place rider salary and I ’ m going to win . I knew when I was in the hospital bed that I was coming to win this year and moving forward I was going to win . I think everybody else had lost faith in me . I ’ ve been a solid rider . I ’ ve won a lot of national enduros . I ’ ve been on the podium at a lot of GNCC ’ s . But it ’ s funny . When you get injured , everybody forgets what you were and who you were . So the Kawasaki was a fun move . I really wanted to bounce around from brand to brand , but obviously I meshed well with the Yamaha and just kind of stuck with it . n