On February 28th, at the Losail motocross circuit in Qatar, Ryan Villopoto will begin his assault on the world GP series, having signed with the Monster Energy Kawasaki Team of Europe in hopes of bringing Kawasaki their first World Championship in the MXGP class.
During the winter, the nine-time US champion has been spotted at different local tracks preparing for the upcoming season. On Thursday, Cycle News caught RV2 at Glen Helen Raceway and asked him how his preparation is going.
How is your training going?
It’s going all right. I think we’re getting pretty close to being ready and with the bike. I feel pretty good; we’re still six weeks away, so still a little bit of time to get ready.
Once the season starts, will you live in Europe or fly back and forth?
Yeah, I’ll live over there. It doesn’t make sense to travel that far. We’ll just stay over there.
A lot of riders have gone to Europe with the intention of living there, but found they didn’t like it. Do you think you will be able to cope with it?
I honestly don’t care. Food is food, there are honestly things I like and things I don’t like. Bottled water and the basics are all I need. As far as I’m concerned, as long as I have a bed to sleep in, then I’ll be all right.
When will you go to Europe for good?
Yeah, we actually go over there on the 24th of January for good, so we’ll be over there testing and doing some riding.
You aren’t taking any of your American support team – mechanics and such – it’s all a European contingent.
Yeah, everyone but my wife and my practice bike mechanic, Tanner, are all new to me.
So is everything coming together the way you planned it?
Yes, I’m pretty happy with everything so far. It’s been a little bit of a struggle since we are so far away from the team, so it will be nice once we get over there and be amongst the team and with them when we have problems. They are over 4000 miles away so it’s been tough. We have KMC here but they are so engulfed in the supercross series right now it’s been tough hooking up, but we haven’t had too many issues, and once we get over there everything should go smoothly.
Have you watched the two supercross rounds held so far and what are your thoughts?
Anaheim 1 is always its always tough to draw an opinion from, but Kenny [Roczen] obviously looked pretty good. Phoenix, basically, Kenny and Eli ran away with it, and then Eli broke away from Kenny. So those guys are riding good now, but once you get past the west coast rounds, just like we’ve seen before, a lot can happen. Daytona always seems to be a turning point every year. That’s almost where the series starts. You’ve got to be in it at that point, but then the gate really drops around Daytona, and then you’ve really got to start racing. By that point, the weekend’s are dragging on and there are little nagging injuries here and there, and there is still a lot more racing to come – all back-to-back, which makes it tough. So that is where you’ll see who is ready and who is not.
How did it feel watching the gate drop at A1 and not being in the mix?
I told my guys I didn’t know how I’d feel, but when that gate dropped it didn’t bother me, so I guess I made the right decision.
