£ Watching Travis
land the first
Double Backflip
still gives us goose
bumps and has
to be one of our
favourite pieces of
FMX history.
That must have been pretty amazing.
And they invited me to California. My mom
didn’t know.
And the rest is history. I was looking
back at footage from the Race of
Champions and you managed to beat
Vettel straight up in 2010 and then you
did it in 2017 as well. What was that like?
Pretty rad. I’ve gone against Vettel four
times and beaten him three. And the only
one that he beat me in was a WRC car,
which was so disappointing. Cause I was
like, “S**t!” Got him in a Porsche touring
car and the last was a lights car so that was
kinda cheating on my part. It was freaking
rad.
So on live TV, I beat Sebastian Vettel.
Everyone’s just booing. Like I’m about
to get thrown out. Vettel’s out in the first
round, first everything. I come back, I’m
all excited and they showed it on live TV
but my wife was asleep on the couch.
She’s like, “Well I thought I’d just watch the
finals.” I’m like, “U.S. never makes it to the
finals!”
Was Vettel sore with you afterwards?
Oh no, Vettel’s awesome. What’s cool about
some of the younger guys coming up is - I
say younger guys, pretty much everyone
that’s on top of their sports now - they grew
up watching X Games and action sports
and stuff.
Vettel was... I’m not saying a fan, but at
least knew who I was and had respect for
what I did before then. He actually... the
only reason I beat him the first time, was
because he took me for a ride in that same
car earlier and I knew exactly how fast he
went in that car. So I was like, “Thanks for
the help.”
Are you much of an F1 fan?
I’m a big fan of racing of any kind. But
honestly, this past year I haven’t been
following as much as I should for sure.
Räikkönen’s one of my favourites so it’s
been good to see him back. u
The most interesting part about that: my
wife didn’t - she does now - but she didn’t
know anything about cars. Vettel wins the
F1 championship, youngest to ever win
the F1 championship. We go to Germany
for Race of Champions. It’s the first round.
U.S. gets paired against Germany. So I go
up against Schumacher and Vettel. And I’m
like... in Germany. This is the coolest thing
that’s ever happened. We just flew in that
morning and my wife went to sleep on the
couch.