Category: Bikes

After winning the Anaheim II round, racing to podium finishes at Glendale, Denver and Salt Lake City and placing a fighting third overall in the final 2023 AMA 250SX West Region Supercross Championship,  Levi Kitchen will now focus his attention on Fox Raceway and the opening round of the 2023 AMA Pro Motocross Championship set for this Saturday afternoon in Southern California.

Heading out of Florida with his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammates on Wednesday morning, Kitchen, who placed 11th in the 2022 AMA Pro Motocross Championship, has gained a terrific amount of confidence and speed in the past year and is now driven to make a serious run at the 2023 outdoor title atop his Yamaha YZ250F.

Q: You’re really ready for this outdoor season, aren’t you?

LEVI KITCHEN: Yeah, I’m feeling really good. Coming into the outdoors, I have a lot more experience now that than I did in supercross. I’m definitely feeling motivated after the way that supercross season went. It’s going to give me a little bit of confidence going into Pala, for sure. I also think my starts are a bit better than they were last year, and confidence is better too. And for how well it went last year up until I got hurt, I was coming from 15th place through 20th place with the bad starts I was doing. So I think if I start up front this year, I’ll be a lot easier on myself. The goal is just to be in the fight. I want to be no worse than in that top five. I want to be in the battle all the time. If I’m consistently there and fighting for podiums and wins, then I’ll find myself up towards the top at the end of the season.

Q: What’s your take on the competition you’ll be up against come Pala and beyond?

LK: It’s getting deeper and everybody is fairly close. Right now there are four or five or six guys who could potentially win races. I would love to be that standout guy, but it’s going to come down to putting yourself in a good position and minimizing the mistakes. I’m really looking forward to it. And I think it’ll be a great summer.

Q: How is everything with the team and your race bikes?

LK: The bikes are great. The team is good, and everything seems to be great. I really want to win and I’m finally in that position now. I’ve always wanted to win. I think everybody does. But I think it’s realistic that I can do that now. There’s several other guys that are saying the same thing right, but we’ll see. We’ve got we got about a week and we’re going to see who’s done the work and where everybody’s at.

You’re really flying on the bike outdoors. It’s what we grew up doing when we first started riding a dirt bike, so it’s more natural, and I think the outdoors comes down to being able to suffer out there on the track. You’re pretty exhausted and then you have to gear up 30 minutes later and go do it again. So it’s a whole different mindset. For me, it’s just basically trying to turn my brain off completely and let my instincts and desire kick in.

Q: How about Pala? How do you feel about that place? You looking forward to it?

LK: It’s okay. It just depends on the preparation and everything. It looks like the weather will be good on Saturday. I don’t mind the track. I know a lot of people. I try to do the best I can and be positive with every track and take the positives away from them.

I think a lot of people are going into Pala and they might not be the biggest fan of it. So I’m okay with it. I think it races okay. I just need to execute my starts. It’s important to if you want to be in a fight for a championship. I’m going to have to really go for it. By round four, you know what’s up. It’s almost like you see everybody kind of fall into place. Like, they kind of just think this is where they belong in the races and even the championship, and this might be where they end up. I tried to not do that last year and I came off a with a pair of eighths and then I went and won the first moto Colorado. This year I don’t want to go into the second round thinking that somebody is much better than me or whatever the case is.

Hero MotoSports Team Rally is the name of the motorsports effort organized by the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters – Hero MotoCorp – and the team for which rider Ross Branch competes for in the FIM World Rally-Raid Championship.

Seventh overall on a Hero 450 Rally machine at the recent 2,300 kilometer Sonora Rally in Mexico, the Batswana is now poised to make a run at the 2023 World Raid-Raid Championship.

Q: You’re competing in the 2023 FIM World Rally-Raid Championship and you recently participated in the Sonora Rally 2023 where you placed seventh overall. Can you tell us about the event?

ROSS BRANCH: We were in Mexico for round three of the World Rally-Raid Championship. We started in Hermosillo and we raced all the way up to the American border, which was incredible. It was round three. It was a big one. In Rally-Raid we only have five rounds of the World Championship, one of them being the famous Dakar Rally. Round three was good for us. We went out and we were top five and top 10 every day, which was good.

Obviously, I wanted to win the event, but unfortunately with Rally-Raid racing, you make one small mistake with the navigation and it puts you back a long way. I made a mistake on day one and lost a lot of time, so it was hard to catch up. Everybody is so on it now in Rally-Raid racing. It’s all like a 200-mile or 300-mile motocross race at the moment. Everybody is going so fast! All the guys are super-strong at the moment. It’s really good to be a part of that lead group, but it’s also really difficult to win races. The top 10 or top 20 guys can all win the races. We finished seventh overall, but I wanted to be on the top step, that’s for sure.

Q: Between all of the competing manufacturers – Honda, KTM, Husqvarna, Gas Gas and Hero – and all of the competing world class riders, the FIM World Rally-Raid Championship makes for a fiercely competitive battlefield, doesn’t it?

RB: For sure. It’s a huge war now, especially because of the Dakar Rally. if you’re a manufacturer and you come out of the Dakar Rally on top, it shows that your bike can go for 10,000 miles with no issues and is really strong. All of the manufacturers are putting everything they have into it. There are more manufacturers coming to the table as we speak. There are new manufacturers coming every day and I’m really proud to be a part of a semi-young team. It’s a new team to Rally-Raid racing and a new team to Dakar. The team I ride for is Hero Motorsports. It is a team from India. Yeah, I’m really proud and like I say, all of the manufacturers are putting everything they have into it and working really hard to be at the top of the Dakar Rally, as well as the World Championship.

Q: The Hero MotoCorp., Hero Motosports Rally Team that you’re now a part of is an absolutely fascinating effort. There is a masterplan at play with Hero and where they ultimately want to go in both the sport and the motorcycle industry, isn’t there?

RB: Yeah, they are huge. It’s really, really good for us as a sport. To get these new manufacturers and these new guys that are coming into the sport with a lot of passion and with a lot of enthusiasm is just awesome. Hero themselves have sold one hundred million motorcycles, which is incredible. They are the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. They’ve just recently joined the off-road racing scene and they’ve done extremely well. They’re developing every day and putting everything they have and all of their resources into rally racing and that’s awesome for us as a sport and it is awesome for us as athletes.

Nobody has really heard of the Hero brand on this side of the world, so going into rally is incredible for us. They are definitely one of the strongest manufacturers and a force to be reckoned with. We are going up against the big names like Honda and KTM and we are doing extremely well. We managed to win a couple of stages at the Dakar Rally this year, which is an incredible feat for the brand and it obviously shows that we are a force to be reckoned with and it’s going to be exciting. The next couple of years are going to be super-exciting. Hero is all in and putting everything they have into it and developing the bike and team day-by-day. It’s exciting times for us.

Q: It all adds up to a world class racing research and development racing effort, doesn’t it?

RB: They are doing everything they can to make us win. They are developing the engine and they’re developing the suspension. They’re changing the frame and they’re changing the chassis. They’re changing everything all of the time just to be better at every race. They use the World Championship to develop the bike, and obviously their big goal is to win the Dakar Rally.

And to be honest, I think we are at a point now where we can win the Dakar Rally. We’ve shown that we can win races and we’ve shown that we can win stages, so I think now the next thing is definitely the Dakar Rally. We’re really strong and it is a huge project for India, as well. India is putting everything they have towards rally racing. They’ve also got a national team of five riders in India, which is incredible. That’s beautiful for our sport now because we are taking the five guys and we’ll try and teach them how to ride rally. Hopefully, we’ll see some Indians coming out of India and into the World Rally-Raid Championship. Riding and representing the Hero brand globally is going to be incredible for them.

Q: How did you end up with hero MotoSports? Did they come looking for you? And did you even know who they were at the time?

RB: I was lucky enough to be friends with the team manager of Hero for many years. I started my rally career in 2019. I did the first Dakar Rally in 2019 in Peru. Then in 2021 I was lucky enough and fortunate enough to sign with the Monster Energy Yamaha World Rally-Raid Championship team.

When Yamaha decided to leave Rally-Raid for a while, I was lucky enough to sign with Hero. For me, it was a new step and a new opening. I was not knowing what to expect. They were from India and we’ve never seen them in off-road racing or motocross or anything like that, so it was a huge step for me, as well. It’s part of the family now. We’re all together and we have such a good vibe going on in the team. I’m so lucky to be able to put back a little bit of information that I’ve gained from my short rally career and give it to them to try and help them develop the bike and to help them try and win.

I also have Joaquim Rodrigues as a teammate. Joaquim is coming from being a former U.S. supercross rider and is a supercross and motocross legend here, as well. He’s also got so much experience and so much to give back to the team. At the moment, we’re moving big steps in the right direction. It’s a new brand and a new team and we’ve got a bright future.

The first four races of the 2023 FIM MotoGP World Championship have been a steady rise for second year Mooney VR46 Racing Team Desmosedici GP22 rider Luca Marini. After a crash-filled outing at the season opener in Portugal, Marini took eighth place at Argentina, scored his first career MotoGP podium finish at the Circuit of The Americas, and rode to sixth place in Spain. Now comes Sunday’s French Grand Prix and the quirky 2.6-mile, 14-turn Bugatti-Le Mans circuit.

“With Le Mans it is very important with the weather,” noted Marini. “Everybody is hoping for good weather tomorrow with good temperatures. However, at Le Mans it seems like this is never possible, so we need to be smart and clever and ready for every situation and every condition because it is really important to be on top of everything here.. You really need to be very fast every time out. The fact we were fourth in the sprint race will really help us here.”

At COTA last month, Marini and his GP22 raced to the first premier class podium finish of the young Italian’s career.

“Yeah, it was a fantastic, beautiful feeling to get that podium,” smiled Marini. “ It means a lot of things. Personally, it was a reward for all of my sacrifice to get here to MotoGP. The whole Austin situation is nice for us because it is a different place and a different event compared to all the others. Also, the layout of the track there is very difficult and the rider can make the difference. This year I am feeling really comfortable and I feel like I’m in a great way with my bike. Also, the team has improved a lot when compared to last year. We made some good adjustments on the bike. It has been very nice to ride my bike everywhere we go this year.

“The level of MotoGP riders is incredible,” he noted. “Also, everybody has a very good technical package so every Sunday it can be a different winner. It’s really important to work well with your team and group from Friday morning in a positive way. You want to try and be fast in every condition and then on Sunday it is just yourself against the other riders and you need to be better than them. It’s not easy but every Grand Prix is different, so we can try. It is amazing. We are really racing at a really high level and I think that the riders have improved a lot compared to past years and it is fantastic to compete against these riders in MotoGP.”

Mooney VR46 Racing Team overlord, nine-time world champion and Marini’s brother Valentino Rossi proclaims that Marini has developed an amazing, highly competitive feel with the Desmosedici GP22. Marini agrees that his feel for the bike has developed significantly in his second year with the team.

“Yes, this season I feel better. I’m feeling really good with myself and with the training at home. My passion is growing — is a pleasure to be able to ride a MotoGP bike and doing my job in the sport is a beautiful feeling. That gives me the motivation to work hard every day to be a better MotoGP rider.”

How much better can things get? He’s feeling like the sky’s the limit.

“I feel like I can fight for the world title this year,” declared Marini. “It will be difficult — we need to see. The most important thing is to try to be fast everywhere and fight for the podium whenever there is the opportunity. And when it is possible, I want to try and win. Everything needs to be perfect to do that. We need to keep working to always make ourselves better.”

All things considered, Luca Marini is in a great place thus far in 2023. Cautiously optimistic and taking it all one step at a time, Marini is keenly aware that there is a globetrotting marathon before him.

“This season is crazy. We have a lot of races this season also with the sprint races. Our job became more difficult but we are ready and I think that when you enjoy what you are doing, it doesn’t matter how many races there ae because it’s pleasure to travel with my team. To spend time with them is great because they are like a second family. I really enjoy every moment and also this season I’m feeling great with the bike, so every GP has an opportunity for me to try and win a race or make a podium. Everything is set and good and 100-percent. With a little bit of luck, we are right there and we are getting closer every day.”

Now in his ninth season in the MotoGP World Championship’s Moto2 category, Sam Lowes secured his first victory of the year with Marc VDS Racing at Jerez last month. Now he’s got even bigger goals in mind.

“Yeah, we really did well on a lot of levels at Jerez,” Lowes says. “And coming back from injury, it has just taken me longer than I thought to get back to the level I need to be at, so I knew that the Jerez track was good for me. I’d already rode this year’s bike in testing at Jerez. Everybody did, but we had a good feeling, so yep, I wanted to make a good weekend and a strong weekend and to take a step forward from the first few races.

“My shoulder and everything is feeling good now, so I expected to be strong, but not quite as strong as that. It’s always nice when it works in that direction, rather not being as strong as you think. I knew it was coming and I have been working towards it, but yes, it was a very proud moment for me to come back from where I’ve been. There were certain points last year that I wasn’t even sure if I would be racing this year with the shoulder problems. There is pride and happiness, but definitely also a lot of relief in that result, honestly.”

For Lowes, the Jerez triumph was akin to lighting a match on his ’23 title charge.

“In racing there are a lot of guys that are fast and there are a lot of teams that are good and there are there are bikes that are good, but the biggest thing that slows you down or speeds you up is your confidence and how you are feeling, so that’s something you can’t buy,” he notes. “You’ve got to wait until it comes your way until you’re feeling good on the bike. Now I feel like I’ve got a lot of things under control. I feel confident in what I’m doing. These are the moments in racing, probably in sport, actually, where you really have to kick on and make the most of it.

“There are some really good tracks coming up, tracks where I have performed well on in the past. Coming off of this result, there is no reason why I can’t go there and do the same. It’s a tight class and a tough class that we’re in, but when your moment comes you have to try and make the most of it. There is not extra pressure, it’s that you need to try and use that good momentum.”

Lowes rides the No. 22 Marc VDS Triumph-powered Kalex in Moto2, where the regulations limit the chances to gain technical advantage, so confidence and setup skills are paramount.

“Everything here is so competitive, with the engines and a lot of other things being the same,” he explains. “Each weekend comes down to a good direction on the Friday or a good setting on the Saturday. It is in the details. I feel like we’ve worked hard this year in the testing and also with the test we did this week. We have things under control, which is obviously really important. Yeah, we just use all of the benefits that we can.”

With crew chief Gilles Bigot along with team members Adria Perez, Steven Bradley and Anthony Couturier, Lowes believes he is a part of a championship-caliber racing effort.

“I’m lucky to have such an experienced crew that have seen it all before,” he says. “They’ve seen the good and bad times, so they can see how I was riding and they saw my speed and my consistency. They were not panicked during these first three races of the new season. Maybe other teams would have been changing more things, but they still knew that I wasn’t far off from doing something really nice. When you’re training between all of these days off, you’re able to relax knowing you’re going to the next race at Le Mans with good people around you. It makes it all a lot easier.

“I think when you do things together and you achieve good things, it’s such a positive. You know we’ve done a lot of good races together now at different tracks and in different situations and we’ve had some good race wins. I think that when you do that together, you believe in each other. When you do win and you do it together, it’s not just talk. It’s fact. We have the race wins to back it up. We have a nice relationship. I know that they’ve got my back and they know that I can do things like I did last weekend when everything is good. it makes me proud to have those guys there for me.”

Lowes has worked at maintaining focus on race weekends and keeping his eyes, interests and concerns fixed to his side of the garage.

“You can get a little bit of looking left and right when things are not going good,” he says. “You end up looking at what people have or what they’re doing. I have to believe that when everything is right I can do the job. There is not much sense for me to look at other people or get carried away or get distracted by comments of other people, because I know that I’m working hard and I know that the team is working hard and we are doing everything we can. When you go to bed at night knowing that and you’re doing everything you can, that’s all we can do, isn’t it? I just look at myself and improve the areas that I’ve made mistakes in or the areas where I’m weak and when I do that and we out everything together, we are not far away.”

Lowes is aware that there is still a very long Moto2 season before him and will now focus on the immediate task coming his way: The French Grand Prix one the Le Mans Bugatti circuit next weekend.

“There are a lot of races coming after the summer break. If you hit the ground running now, it’s hard to keep that momentum,” he admits. “Of course in an ideal world I want to win every race, but it’s a long season and you need to do the hard yards now and just be consistent and not reach too much at the wrong moment. Le Mans is the track where I first won with this team in 2020. It’s a good atmosphere always there and a great event. The track suits my style with a lot of braking and a lot of tight corners and that s something that I am quite strong at, so it suits my style. That’s always nice when you’re a rider and you can go there and sort of ride your natural way. I’m looking forward to it. With the experience I’ve got now and the mistakes I’ve made and learned from, (that) is stuff that you can’t buy. It’s all another tool that I’ve got and I’m able to make it work for me.”

With seven months, and 14 more races still ahead of him, how does the 31-year-old Briton and brother to Kawasaki World Superbike challenger Alex Lowes rate his chances at the Moto2 championship?

“Honestly, with the way I feel with this year’s bike and with the team, getting that first win makes a massive difference. To be only round four and to already have that is something that I can take a lot of confidence from. My goal now with the next four or five races before the summer break is to keep myself in the championship and get some strong rides. If the win is there, take it. I just want to keep myself in it and then keep on after the summer break and go after the championship.”

Thirteen years, four AMA Pro Motocross 450 titles and two Monster Energy Supercross Championships on from winning on his AMA Pro Racing debut at the Hangtown Motocross Classic in 2010, Tomac is still hard at it, now locked up in a titanic tussle for the 2023 stadium title with Red Bull KTM Factory Racing pilot Cooper Webb.

He’s tied with Webb at 244 points as the series prepares to head to Arizona’s State Farm Stadium for the 12th round of the championship fight. RACER checked in with him to get the lowdown as the battle for the title heads towards its climax.

Q: Last summer it was Chase Sexton. This winter it’s Cooper Webb. You’ve been at this for quite a long time now and here you are caught up in another winner-take-all march to a title. That ever get old?

ELI TOMAC: It doesn’t, actually. I’m enjoying the competition. Yes, it’s stressful, but I’m enjoying the competition right now. Like you said, Chase Sexton and Cooper Webb have been the two really strong guys that I’ve been battling with during the season for the points lead. Perhaps even more so I’ve been battling with Cooper as of late. I wouldn’t expect anything less, and each season is a little bit different. Yeah, the competition is strong. You know, when I lost that points lead again to Webb, I was pretty frustrated. When you have those bad weekends, for me, it just gives me motivation to go back home, study, figure out what I did wrong, figure out where I could be better, find out if I need to fall back on something that I’ve done in the past to improve myself. My mindset is that I’m always trying to get better and always trying to improve and to never settle. If I get beat, I really try to figure out why I got beat and then be better the next weekend.”

Q: Six wins and a couple of off-song results, especially the eighth you posted up at Indianapolis. What’s your take on your season thus far?

ET: It’s been another great season. It’s unique in that I started off really hot, you know? I have not won Anaheim 1 on a 450 snd this is first year doing it. That was a big change for me. Another big change is that I haven’t had to change my motorcycle a whole lot since the beginning of the season. That’s been different this season. And the guy I’m battling with in this championship is a different player this year and that’s Cooper Webb.

As far as this season, I love everything about it. It’s totally unique. It doesn’t really feel the same at all. They never are. Obviously, it’s going to be a barnburner, so we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing. That’s what I live for, is racing and lining up on the starting gate. That’s how I’ve made it this far in my career and nothing can relpace that feeling for me, you know? That’s why I line up.

Q: You’re now in your second season with the Monster Energy Yamaha Star racing outfit. You’ve won titles and plenty of races with the organization during the period. Has it been a strong relationship between the race team and yourself?

ET: It has been. Yamaha has been fantastic for me. This year we have a new motorcycle again, so that was a big test for us. Even in year one with Yamaha, that was my first year with them and that was a new motorcycle, as well. For me it has been a fun journey along the way, and they’ve made it enjoyable and we’ve had success making it work in all of the conditions in supercross and motocross. We’re a great fit right now.

Q: You’re about to head out to Glendale and the 12th round of the 2023 Monster Energy Supercross Series. How are you looking at that round?

ET: I do look forward to it. I kind of treat it as a local race. There are a lot of local people from my area here that go down there; it’s like a five to five-and-a-half hour drive for most people around us. I’m treating it as a local event so I’m always ready to go at that race. I’ve had some good results to back it up there, so yeah, let’s go.

Q: Beginning with Glendale on Saturday we now have six races left in the 2023 stadium season. Do you feel good about where you are at and with what’s left to come here leading into the championship finale at Rice-Eccles Stadium over in Salt Lake City on May 13?

ET: I do. I do. I was in a little bit of a fun there at Indianapolis. I injured my neck a little bit and then that kind of set me back, but now I’m back to being healthy so I should be ready to come out firing for these last six races.

Q: You’re now an elder statesman of the sport. You’ve won everything there is to win, you’re the reigning Monster Energy Supercross champion and you’re deep in the throes of trying to defend here again in 2023. I feel like I can ask you this: How does it feel to be The Man?

ET: It’s cool, and for me this is the most enjoyable part of my career that I’ve experienced so far and I’m just enjoying it all and enjoying each race. I’m trying to be a good role model to all of the kids that are watching us. Yeah, just enjoying it.