96 RIDER INTERVIEWSMathew ScholtzClassHONOS SuperbikeRace Number 11Age 27Home Province KwaZulu NatalBobby Fong took Mathewout in race two, and thisis the aftermath
97What team are you riding for?Westby RacingYou had a mixed bag of results this lastweekend, from coming second in race oneto being taken out in Race two, what areyour expectations for the 2020 season?My Expectations for 2020 are to obviously bea front runner in the MotoAmerica SuperBikeSeries, I would like to get a few wins undermy belt and definitely try to finish top threein the championship running.Can you please run me through your qualifying,race one and race two briefly?The qualifying wasn’t the greatest for me,we missed a lot of track time on Friday,I crashed in first practice, we had somemechanical problems in practice twoand practice three on Saturday morning. Ionly managed to qualify fourth. Race onewas really good, I got off to a decent startaround about fifth place and then just slowlyworked my way past a couple of guys andended up second. Race two was pretty muchthe same sort of deal, I got off to an alrightstart, in about fifth or sixth place and slowlypicked off the guys one by one and I reallydo believe we had the pace to get away fromJake Gagne and Bobby Fong, and finish secondagain but unfortunately Bobby hit me inthe back braking down towards corner fiveand we were both taken downYou are already quite well known in SouthAfrica for your racing, what made you wantto race in America over Europe, was thereany particular reason?I mainly made my way over to Americabecause I was riding for Ricky Morias in theSouth African SuperGP Championship atthe time and Sheridan Morias hurt himselfin a WSBK crash and he was riding for a MotoAmericaSuper Stock team and I was giventhe opportunity to go and ride in his placethen. I raced in Europe for quite a while whenI was younger, but it just didn’t seem to workout cause all the teams just wanted moneyand it was really hard to find a decent ride.Yea it just didn’t really work out for me.This is your third year in SuperBikes, how didyou find the jump from Super Stock to theSuperBike Class? And can you tell us whatthe main differences are? (What mods areallowed?)I got rookie of the year in 2018 which wasmy first year, last year we had a full magneticbrake system and we really struggleda lot and ended up finishing 6th which wasworse than the first year, it really wasn’t areally good year for us in 2019. The jump fromSuperStock to SuperBikes was pretty easyfor me because 2017 I won the SuperStockChampionship and then when we moved upto the SuperBike in 2018 it was kind of a halfSuperStock half SuperBike package. It had alot of SuperBike engine bits but a stock softwaresystem, just a basic wire EC tractioncontrol system and then 2019 was the fullelectronic package, so its kind of been thesame for me. We just upgraded from version6 to version 12 from last year to this year andit seems to have made quite a big difference.When I was in the SuperStock Championshipwe had a decent amount of things we couldchange on the bike regarding triple clamps,we were allowed special forks and shocksand I think one or two bits in the engine, butnow the SuperStocks is very very basic, therules have changed slightly.Have you emigrated to America? If not, whatare your living arrangements like?I’m currently in the process of moving toAmerica. I applied for my green card but obviouslywith the whole Corona Virus and lockdown world wide happening, its very veryvery difficult but I paid for it and the greencard is in the process right now, so hopefullyit will come through next year. As it stands Ihave a P1 visa which is a specific sportsmanvisa, so I’m allowed to be in the country andwork only in the motorcycle racing industry,racing.How did you get into riding?I got into riding when I was maybe six orseven. I went to a friends house and he livednext to a park and he had a little PW50 andwe kind of just took it out and rode it aroundthe park and just loved it you know. I askedmy dad to get me one around seven yearsold and I used to ride around the soccerfield when he was playing his matches on aSunday afternoon. Then one day we just wentto a motocross track rode there a few timesand entered a novice race and pretty muchcontinued on from there moving up to 65sand 85s. then did a little bit of the motardchampionship on the pit bikes and theneventually moved onto the full road racingCBR 150 and then onto the 125 GP bike theninto Red Bull Rookies Cup and so on fromthere.We have seen you around Red Star backhome training some of South Africa’s up andcoming talent. What advice would you giveto the aspiring racers?As far as advice to upcoming racers, justkeep on working at your craft, every time yougo to the track just try to work on something,you know just always try to push a little bitharder, try to push your brake markers alittle bit further, pull the acceleration pointsfurther back and try to work on your styleand using your body to really help the bikethrough the corners.When can we expect you back in SA?I normally only head back to South Africa inDecember and January just to go have a littleholiday and see friends and family, otherwiseI spend most of my life here, you know I kindof sold everything back home to help mehere so yea around December January timethat I get to enjoy beautiful South Africa.
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