Andrea Wilson | November 3, 2016
New York native Ryan Wells packed up his van and headed west to Michigan en route to the 2016 GNC2 title.
Although the end result is the same, the road to a championship is different for everyone. Sometimes it’s a pretty smooth ride, other times a bumpy road. And sometimes it just takes awhile. For Ryan Wells, the journey was the latter. There were a few bumps along the path to his first AMA Pro Flat Track GNC2 title, but that didn’t deter Wells. Persistence paid off and the stars aligned when he signed with Parkinson Brothers Racing for 2016. When the opportunity presented itself to live by his team, the 20-year-old from Albion, New York, packed up his van and headed west to be a part of the Michigan Mafia—flat-track racing’s hot spot around Flint, Michigan. It was a path that led him to his first professional flat-track title.
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Photos Courtesy of AMA Pro Racing/Brian J. Nelson and Andrea Wilson
The Beginning
Like every journey, it had to start somewhere. The flat-track seed was planted at an early age for Wells in Upstate New York. Wells’ dad raced locally at an amateur level, so it was in the genes. It was a family thing, and when they realized that the kid had a knack for it, the focus shifted to the young Wells.
“My dad had no idea that I would do it like I am now,” Wells said. “He just thought, ‘I was going to have a kid with a dirt bike.’ I learned how to ride a dirt bike before I learned how to ride a bicycle, and he realized that I was good at it, I guess. It just kept going from there.”
But where the ball really got rolling was meeting flat track/road racer James Rispoli. The pair hit it off and Wells not only had a training partner but James’ dad, Phil Rispoli, took the young Wells under his wing and he was treated as part of the family.
“My dad didn’t know anything really about racing,” Wells said. “He was just a guy that went and got a dirt bike and just raced it locally, and he did well at it. Without James and Phil I would have never been able to develop any skill toward it. That’s all their life revolved around when they grew up. When I was coming up through racing, he [James] was always the class above me, so I got to use the bikes that he got off of. It was better for my whole family and everything for racing, because my parents couldn’t really afford it as much as they would have liked to. So luckily Phil and those guys already went through it all and they just helped my parents learn it as they went.”
It was more than just racing help from the Rispolis, it was also learning about the business of racing.
“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 home-schooled in 10th grade because I wanted to race dirt bikes. There was never any doubt of what I wanted to do.”
The Detours
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 following 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 you—and a lot more things to think about than just racing a motorcycle. Although it wasn’t easy and his future in racing was a question mark, Wells never gave up.
“Even when I was racing every race by myself last year I never once said, ‘Man, what else could I do to just fill the spot of racing?’ It was never that,” Wells said. “I always wanted to just race. I didn’t quite know exactly how I could make it happen at that time. I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to pan out.”
While frustrating, detours often times help you in the end. Although Wells never thought he’d still be in the GNC2 class four years after turning pro, it was an experience that was invaluable.
“Looking back at it, when I turned pro at 16 I never would have thought I’d still be in a GNC2 class, but now after winning the championship I would never change any of it,” he said. “If I wouldn’t have learned what I’ve learned in GNC2 class, if I went expert in the GNC1 and went through what I went through in this class, it would have eaten me alive. It’s just so much more of a different level of racing. I’m glad now that I stayed down and just kind of bit the bullet a little bit and got to ride for an awesome team. It makes you appreciate it more and not take things for granted.”
Back On Track
It may have been a rockier path, but it eventually led to a deal with Parkinson Brothers Racing in 2016. And while Wells was really hoping to advance to the GNC1 class, his experience taught him take full advantage of the opportunity in front of him. That not only was taking the ride that team owner Craig Parkinson offered, but also the opportunity to move to Michigan and live with his bike builder Gordon Schopieray. And with that move, also came the opportunity to train with friend and mentor Bryan Smith, who also clinched his own championship this year in the GNC1 class.
“When they told me that it would be a possibility for me to live down here with Gordy, I definitely took him up on it,” Wells said. “I hung out with Bryan [Smith] the week that I was here [in Michigan] before Daytona and we talked about how cool, even for him, to have somebody to train with too. So it just kind of was cool how it all worked out.”
When it went well, it went really well. The relationship with his team was a match made in heaven and, even though he was far from home, he had a good support group at his new home in Michigan.
“Actually it’s kind of crazy how well it worked out,” he said about his new team. “How quick it took us to get along and to make a relationship—I don’t think I’ve seen something go that smoothly for other people, so I just feel lucky that it was with that kind of a group of people, that wanting to win and wanting to have fun at races. It’s still kind of amazing to me how everything just fell into place perfectly.”
And that perfect relationship may not have gelled the same way if he had stayed at home in New York.
“I live with the guy that works on my bikes every week, so we have a pretty personable relationship to where I can just call the guy and tell him how it is and he gets it, as he would tell me the same thing,” Wells said. “We communicate really well. Me and my team owner, if something’s ever bothering each other we make sure it’s known. That’s how stuff gets fixed and gets better. I don’t think that would be the same way if I didn’t move down here.”
Although Wells was committed to racing flat track, moving away from home is never easy. But it was easier moving to Michigan.
“Last year I moved to Wisconsin when I did my race program on my own because I needed to work to make money to do it,” he explained. “I happened to move in with a race family that knew I was going to have to take weekends off, obviously. But I didn’t meet anybody, and I didn’t have any friends there, so that was really difficult. I was always kind of trying to find an excuse to go back home, but this year I’ve been home, I think twice only for a couple days at a time, just because I’m fine here. I’ve got good people. I’m never bored. If I’m not doing something, people are making me do something. I miss my family obviously. I’ll never not miss those guys, but I don’t really miss being home at all.”
Wells is quite at home in Michigan. And he’d like to stay. After all, it doesn’t take someone long in the flat-track world to realize that Michigan is the place to be if you have aspirations of being a grand national champion. It’s sort of like if you want to be a grand prix world champion someday, perhaps it’s best to move to Spain. Now that’s not to say that the location is mandatory (in both cases), but for sure in American flat-track racing there’s definitely a pipeline of champions coming out of the Michigan Mafia.
“If I’ve learned as much as I’ve learned since April, if I’ve learned that much in that amount of time I can only imagine what I could learn over a couple years’ time,” he said. “You see all the people that come out of Michigan. The top two guys in the GNC1 class [Smith and Jared Mees] are 20 minutes apart form each other. It’s not a coincidence. I don’t think the year would have went quite as well as it would have if I didn’t move down here.”
That right chemistry with your team is invaluable, but also is having someone push you constantly. Having a mentor and training partner in Smith, has also helped a lot. It also didn’t hurt that Smith is “Mr. Mile.” Wells went into the year without a mile win and left with three in ’16.
“Anything I can feed off of that guy, you know I take it,” he said. “Also, Bryan’s been huge as far as training. I never really trained that much when I lived in New York so it’s definitely helped me. “
Ultimately the way through Michigan not only secured his first GNC2 championship, it led him back home for his crowning achievement. Wells was able to secure the championship two rounds early at his home race at the Central New York Half Mile at Rolling Wheels Raceway Park in front of his family and friends.
“A lot of my family never even knew what I raced,” he said. “They saw a local track but they didn’t know what professional flat track was. So a lot of my family was there and that was cool for them to see it. A lot of my friends from high school, they were there. I haven’t seen my friends from high school since 10th grade, because I got home-schooled after for racing. So for them to see what I’ve been doing is pretty awesome. Then to hold a number-one plate up in front of them was even cooler.”
Even though Wells never quit on racing, his confidence had taken a beating last year when he was out there on his own. So while he knew he was capable of the results and knew he had a team behind him that would make it possible to achieve those results, dominating the GNC2 class this season exceeded his expectations.
“Winning five races, that was pretty hard to believe that I would be able to do that, but to say I would win a championship two races early in a season, that wasn’t even a thought,” he said. “So to do that, that was awesome. I was pretty stinking excited. After the finish I walked into the crowd just to hear everybody. It was awesome. It was like a dream come true right there.” CN
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