James Rispoli Talks Rookie BSB Season
Andrea Wilson | January 15, 2015
Hard work, dedication—the key ingredients for success. As the two-time AMA Supersport Champion James Rispoli puts in the work to rehab his shoulder from a recent surgery at the Rockwell Training Facility in Wildomar, California, you can see those words in bold, on his forearm.
They are words to live by if you want to win championships. And yes he has a couple of those already under his belt from the development class in the former U.S. national road race series, AMA Pro Road Racing. But now Rispoli has his eyes on a World Championship, by way of the United Kingdom: the British Superbike Series.
So the 23-year-old packed his bags, left Florida and headed to the not-so-sunshine “state” of England, to compete in the BSB Supersport class for Team Traction Control.
Rispoli’s rookie year was a tale of two seasons: a rough first half, but thankfully, a much better second half that included a couple podiums.
“The first half of the season I don’t really call it a season, but without the beginning of the season we wouldn’t have the second half of the season or even 2015 to even think about,” Rispoli says. “Sometimes you’ve got to take the good with the bad. I was in a really tough spot, and to struggle that much over there was very hard on me. It was also very hard to live over there and deal with it by myself, but it all worked out in the end.”
Making it through the hard times paid off and it all started to come together.
“It was tough, but a relief at the end of the year knowing that we did well enough,” Rispoli says. “I got to show my potential, I got to understand the tracks and I got to show it at the right time. Contract season was up and I got to prove that I could do it. I knew I could from the beginning of the year, but it just took all that time to get the right pieces in.”
To read more of the James Rispoli interview in this week’s Cycle News, click here