SuperBike Magazine June 2020

97
What team are you riding for?
Westby Racing
You had a mixed bag of results this last
weekend, from coming second in race one
to being taken out in Race two, what are
your expectations for the 2020 season?
My Expectations for 2020 are to obviously be
a front runner in the MotoAmerica SuperBike
Series, I would like to get a few wins under
my belt and definitely try to finish top three
in 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 some
mechanical problems in practice two
and practice three on Saturday morning. I
only managed to qualify fourth. Race one
was really good, I got off to a decent start
around about fifth place and then just slowly
worked my way past a couple of guys and
ended up second. Race two was pretty much
the same sort of deal, I got off to an alright
start, in about fifth or sixth place and slowly
picked off the guys one by one and I really
do believe we had the pace to get away from
Jake Gagne and Bobby Fong, and finish second
again but unfortunately Bobby hit me in
the back braking down towards corner five
and we were both taken down
You are already quite well known in South
Africa for your racing, what made you want
to race in America over Europe, was there
any particular reason?
I mainly made my way over to America
because I was riding for Ricky Morias in the
South African SuperGP Championship at
the time and Sheridan Morias hurt himself
in a WSBK crash and he was riding for a MotoAmerica
Super Stock team and I was given
the opportunity to go and ride in his place
then. I raced in Europe for quite a while when
I was younger, but it just didn’t seem to work
out cause all the teams just wanted money
and 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 did
you find the jump from Super Stock to the
SuperBike Class? And can you tell us what
the main differences are? (What mods are
allowed?)
I got rookie of the year in 2018 which was
my first year, last year we had a full magnetic
brake system and we really struggled
a lot and ended up finishing 6th which was
worse than the first year, it really wasn’t a
really good year for us in 2019. The jump from
SuperStock to SuperBikes was pretty easy
for me because 2017 I won the SuperStock
Championship and then when we moved up
to the SuperBike in 2018 it was kind of a half
SuperStock half SuperBike package. It had a
lot of SuperBike engine bits but a stock software
system, just a basic wire EC traction
control system and then 2019 was the full
electronic package, so its kind of been the
same for me. We just upgraded from version
6 to version 12 from last year to this year and
it seems to have made quite a big difference.
When I was in the SuperStock Championship
we had a decent amount of things we could
change on the bike regarding triple clamps,
we were allowed special forks and shocks
and I think one or two bits in the engine, but
now the SuperStocks is very very basic, the
rules have changed slightly.
Have you emigrated to America? If not, what
are your living arrangements like?
I’m currently in the process of moving to
America. I applied for my green card but obviously
with the whole Corona Virus and lock
down world wide happening, its very very
very difficult but I paid for it and the green
card is in the process right now, so hopefully
it will come through next year. As it stands I
have a P1 visa which is a specific sportsman
visa, so I’m allowed to be in the country and
work only in the motorcycle racing industry,
racing.
How did you get into riding?
I got into riding when I was maybe six or
seven. I went to a friends house and he lived
next to a park and he had a little PW50 and
we kind of just took it out and rode it around
the park and just loved it you know. I asked
my dad to get me one around seven years
old and I used to ride around the soccer
field when he was playing his matches on a
Sunday afternoon. Then one day we just went
to a motocross track rode there a few times
and entered a novice race and pretty much
continued on from there moving up to 65s
and 85s. then did a little bit of the motard
championship on the pit bikes and then
eventually moved onto the full road racing
CBR 150 and then onto the 125 GP bike then
into Red Bull Rookies Cup and so on from
there.
We have seen you around Red Star back
home training some of South Africa’s up and
coming talent. What advice would you give
to the aspiring racers?
As far as advice to upcoming racers, just
keep on working at your craft, every time you
go to the track just try to work on something,
you know just always try to push a little bit
harder, try to push your brake markers a
little bit further, pull the acceleration points
further back and try to work on your style
and using your body to really help the bike
through the corners.
When can we expect you back in SA?
I normally only head back to South Africa in
December and January just to go have a little
holiday and see friends and family, otherwise
I spend most of my life here, you know I kind
of sold everything back home to help me
here so yea around December January time
that I get to enjoy beautiful South Africa.