Larry Lawrence | December 28, 2015
You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.
Photography By Larry Lawrence
When politicians talk about being on the side of “hard-working Americans,” they could very well flash a picture of Jared Mees on the screen. At 29, Mees, of Clio, Michigan, is in the prime of his racing career and he’s taking full advantage of that fact. The newly crowned AMA Pro Grand National Champ is a guy who races around 40 events per year. Considering there are only about a dozen AMA Pro Flat Track Nationals, you begin to get the picture of just how busy Mees stays by racing a massive amount of non-national events.
Some riders would consider the risk of racing so many events per year too great and a distraction to their goal of winning the national championship. Mees acknowledges the risks of racing so often, but the way he looks at it is racing is what he does for a living. If there’s a race where Mees can make some money you’ll probably see him there. Plus, talk to his competitors and they’ll freely admit that Mees is going to be a rider to beat no matter the track or racing surface. Hard-pack or cushion, TT or Mile, notch groove or wide line, it doesn’t matter, Mees is going to be up front. And that’s just how he won the championship this season.
In 13 AMA Pro Flat Track races this season, Mees was on the podium a remarkable nine times. He scored points in every round and he won the national on the Black Hills Speedway Half Mile in August.
This season, Mees’ primary competition came from three riders: Bryan Smith, Kenny Coolbeth Jr. and Sammy Halbert. All three of those riders have gaps, however slight, in their programs. Smith of late has had issues on short tracks, for Coolbeth it’s been Peoria serving as his kryptonite, and Halbert seems to have trouble settling on which motorcycle he wants to race. All the while Mees is set with a solid team in his corner anchored by legendary mechanic Kenny Tolbert and former racer Sammy Sweet working as an invaluable asset, doing everything from helping Tolbert to scouting the other riders, giving Mees valuable information on potential racing lines, set-up possibilities, and countless other types of support. And the team is well-financed by Craig Rogers, Steve DeLorenzi and a plethora of other sponsors. Speaking on that, Mees probably has the longest list of sponsors in the history of racing. If you don’t believe it check out his sponsor’s page on his website: www.jaredmees.com/sponsors.
And now, as if Mees isn’t busy enough already, he hit the entire flat track community with one of the surprise announcements of the season, when he revealed that he and his wife Nichole are going to take over the promotion of the Lima Half Mile next year—as if life wasn’t hectic enough. It illustrates the boundless energy that Mees seems to possess.
We caught up with Mees just before he was set to fly off to Spain to race in the Barcelona Superprestigio, to get a behind-the-scenes review of 2015 and a chance to talk about taking on the new task of becoming a national race promoter.
On becoming a race promotor with his wife Nichole next season for the Lima Half Mile:
It may bump me up against things timewise here and there, but Nichole is going to help and I’ve got some other people who are going to be doing things, and Dean and Barb (Gallup, the previous promoters of the event) have said they will help guide me through the process the first one or two years. They want to see the race continue to be successful. So I feel like we are going into this the right way with the right race. I’ve always loved Lima. It’s where I had my first national win, it’s the closest race to my home and it has a great history and strong backing by the fans. I may have to back off on some races a few weeks leading up to the event, but I don’t see it affecting my race schedule too much honestly.
On the philosophy of racing 40 or more races per year (Jared mentioned a couple of years ago that he raced in 51 events in a single season):
I definitely don’t think it hurts me. Sometimes it creates some pressure on just getting the stuff done because I prep and maintain all my 450 singles, and 80 percent of the outlaw races you do are on singles. A lot of times I’m staying up pretty late and getting up early to make all that happen. But I definitely enjoy racing my motorcycles, and there are races were I’ve struggled and I keep plucking away at them.
On the risk of racing so many races:
That’s how I broke my arm in 2013 at a non-national event. It’s definitely in the back of your mind, but on the other hand that’s part of the reason I’ve had so much success because I go and race all these races. If you’re going to race the nationals only, your confidence is going to go down and you’re not going to be as sharp. If you race all the races you can, your income might go up and you’ll be sharp. But there’s no doubt, the more you get on that motorcycle your chances of getting hurt are going to go up. It’s all about what you want to do.
On winning the Superprestigio of the Americas:
That was a great way to cap off the season. It turned out to be a nice, racy track, so a lot of credit goes to Chris Carr and Dennis Pearson for giving us a phenomenal track that you could race on, something I don’t know if many people thought was possible with what they had to work with in terms of space. I thought Vegas was a great event, brought a lot of exposure to the sport and I loved winning that race. I just wish I could have won the national the night before to get a short-track national win to my credit.
On the Du Quoin Mile tire controversy (where Mees’ tire was said to have signs of being chemically altered, but since it was out of the possession of AMA Pro Racing for a week, they assessed no penalty):
All I can say is everything me and my team were asked to do, we did it. If we would have done something to that tire, do you think we would have handed it over at the next race? We could have said we lost it or misplaced it or something. But we handed it over. That’s really all I want to say about it because if I go any further I might be throwing some people under the bus and I’ve been asked not to do that. Since you asked, my goal was to beat Smith by the end of the year by 20 points. (He won by 23) That way there would be no question who was the best rider this year.
On his feelings on the state of flat track racing:
I think flat track is definitely taking steps forward. The Superprestigio, the Troy Bayliss Classic, NBC Sports, the Wall St. Journal, this was all really good and positive stuff.
People can say what they want; I know there was some hate for ending the year on a tiny little short track, but man that was a great place to end the season. Las Vegas is good, we had a good banquet and the racing was awesome. If the Grand National Championship is going to grow, we need high-profile races like that. And for people who complain about short tracks—there were more miles on the circuit than anything else. Why should the season have to end on a mile? In my eyes the mile is the one track that mostly puts the outcome out of the hands of the riders and puts it more to the tuners. It doesn’t come down on the mile as rider against rider, it’s more machine against machine in a way. If you want to see who the best rider is, put us all on 450s and let us go out and find out. And in my eyes that’s either a short track or a TT. I mean Henry Wiles, I don’t want to pump his head up more than it already is, but when he beats us at Peoria, he beats us. It doesn’t matter what bike he’s on. He’s been on everybody’s motorcycle, on about every brand and has still won the thing 11 times.
Nichole’s Swan Song: Nichole Mees Looks Back at a Historic Career
It was so typical of Nichole Mees. She quietly made it known early in the season that 2015 would be her last full-time season in AMA Pro Grand National racing. No press conferences, no major announcements, nothing to draw major attention to her. Nichole’s emphasis has been and always will be about her racing. The fact that over the years she’s become the most successful female racer in the history of AMA Pro Grand National racing, it’s the kind of thing she downplays more than anything else. Yes, she’s proud of her accomplishments, but she’s never wanted special consideration simply for being a female racer. Mees has always wanted the emphasis to be on her results.
It’s ironic now that Mees (formerly Nichole Cheza before her marriage to current GNC number-one Jared Mees in 2013) announced her retirement from racing and then went on to earn her best season ever. She finished the season ranked 20th in the standings—something she’s never done before—and she scored three top-10 finishes, including eighth-place results at both the Du Quoin and Indy Miles.
She very likely would have been even higher in the final standings, but for a hard crash on the Half Mile in Delmar, Delaware, that force her to have surgery on her eye socket.
This year was Nichole’s ninth season on the Grand National circuit, but she’s been racing her whole life. In fact she says she can barely remember a time that she wasn’t racing. It makes sense considering she started racing when she was 4.
In 2003, Nichole was the AMA’s Female Athlete of the Year, and the next year she moved up to the Expert class, and to Harley-Davidson XR-750s. Along the way she’s won Heats and Semis and Dash for Cash events and has been very competitive, especially on the Miles.
Now she and her husband will become national race promoters.
When asked if there was any particular thing that made her decide to retire she said it was multiple factors.
“There was not really one specific reason,” she said. “You know, eventually I’d like to start a family. I’ve been doing this sport for a long time and there just came a time where I thought ‘You know I think I’m ready to step back a little bit.’ I may do a few races here and there over the next couple of years—it’s hard to say.”
She was happy to have one of her best years as her last.
“I had a solid season with some top-10 finishes,” Mees said. “Usually there’s a lot of pressure and the expectations of making the fans and sponsors happy, but this year I just had fun and I felt really comfortable on the bike. Now I’m ready to move on and try some different things.”
You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.