Ricky Carmichael the racer doesn’t need an introduction. But he’s also the co-team owner of the RCH/Soaring Eagle/Jimmy John’s Suzuki, host of the Ricky Carmichael Amateur Supercross at Daytona, and soon-to-be host of his new Camp Carmichael programs at The Farm, his private riding/training facility near his home in Tallahassee, Florida. We met up with him just as the 2015 Monster Energy AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship, makes the turn eastward.
Racer X: Ricky, the California supercross season is over. We’re coming east. This is always where you really started to pick it up as a racer, wasn’t it?
Ricky Carmichael: Yeah, that’s right. I think everybody’s excited within the teams to get on the road and migrate back to the East Coast and start doing some racing on this side, so I think it will be a nice, fresh breath of air for everyone. But even with the change of scenery, the guys have to keep your nose to the ground and keep digging.
What is that like for the 450 class contenders? I know that we’re starting the 250 East, which is a whole different thing, but let’s say you’re Kenny or Ryan or Trey or Eli or anyone else…
I think everybody’s excited. They get to be able to get on some different soil for the most part. Going to Dallas, that will be a little bit different that what they’ve been racing on. Different scenery. Different people. Different dirt. I think it will be fun for those guys. It always was for me; it was just a fresh breath of air for me. So, I’m excited for it. I know the fans of the sport are too.
AT&T Stadium in Arlington is this weekend, which is where your Florida State Seminoles would have played for the college football National Championship, right?
[Laughs] Yeah, they would have. The ‘Noles should have played there for a National Championship game. But they laid an egg in the playoff game in the Rose Bowl and allowed Oregon to go there instead. So it will be a little bit bittersweet for me going there this weekend.
Back to supercross. I want to point this out: You never won the series opener, not once, but you did win five titles. Your team rider Ken Roczen won the opener and got a head of steam going; then he had some tough nights. What do you tell him about the turn east?
Well, I think the biggest thing is the fact that everybody forgets he’s still a young kid. He’s 20 years old! We all know that he has the talent to win, and I feel like we have the best program out there right now. And I know he’s very happy. But, with him being his age, he’s going to make mistakes. But that’s where I feel like I can be there to help him in times, if he needs me, to just give him advice. One thing I’ve learned is no matter how much advice you give, sometimes the best way to learn is making mistakes on your own. Some are gonna hurt worse than others, so obviously just speaking from a couple weeks ago, thank goodness he’s not hurt. He dug himself a big hole [in Oakland]. He went from potentially being 17 points in the lead coming out of the fourth round to now being 9 points out of the championship lead. The good thing that he has up his sleeve is, I think he’s the fastest guy out there. Like I said, we’ve got a great program and he’s a very talented kid. So he just has to learn from each mistake that he makes whether it’s a big one like Oakland, or mistakes that not many people can see from the visual eye. So yeah, I can help him in areas, but sometimes you have to make your own mistakes. He’s still young, and there’s going to be some growing pains. I’m gonna do my best and the team’s doing their best on the technical side to eliminate as many of those as we can before they happen.
Let me put you on the spot a little bit. Between the three other guys that are really in this right now—Ryan Dungey, Trey Canard, Eli Tomac—which one do you think is going to be the most challenging?
All three, for their own reason. Eli is really fast and he’s got plenty of speed to win races—we all know that. I think the biggest thing that all of these guys, well, except Dungey, is I think they have to be more consistent—like Dungey. They have the speed; that’s not the problem. For me, as a racer, that was one of the hardest things to find: speed. Being consistent, once you figured out how to do it, was fairly easy. Consistency was the easy part; trying to step it up to that next level on speed, well, sometimes that’s really, really hard to do.
So, besides Dungey, whoever figures out how to be the most consistent, like Ryan Villopoto was, whoever figures that out first—and stays fast—will be in the best spot to be champion. It’s up to those guys to figure it out. They’ve all got the raw speed to win, which is what you need these days, but they need more consistency in order to be the guy standing up tall at the end—just like Villopoto. Ryan was fast—really, really fast—but he also was consistent, and that’s a hard combination to beat.
Do Ryan and Kenny ever run into each other out there at The Farm? It seems like there’d be some overlap…
Well, they’ve all been in California and Dungey doesn’t ride there anymore anyway. Besides, I never liked riding with the guy that I’m racing with. No disrespect, but when you’re a guy that has a chance to win and you’re racing a guy that’s getting sixth, or eighth, or tenth, that’s a little different. But when you’re racing with a guy that is on the box all the time and has a chance to win and you’re in the same boat as him, I don’t think I want to practice and train with him during the week.
Yeah, I can’t really see Jeremy McGrath and Jeff Emig riding together in, like, the mid-nineties!
[Laughs] Yeah, it’d be like me asking Chad Reed ten years ago, “Hey, wanna come up and ride with me?” or vice versa. That would never happen! But times change and people were always looking for that special, magical answer, and what I’ve learned—and I think any multi-time champion will tell you the same—is that there is no special magic out there. You’ve either got it or you don’t. And I think that’s something that you’re born with and it’s instilled in you. Definitely, times have changed, and we go on with them. I just try to be as positive as I can with both of our riders and give them my thoughts when asked. At the end of the day, they have to make their own decisions. You can’t make them do anything. You just tell them what you believe in, then it’s up to them to either believe in what you’re saying or not.
So with Kenny being there sometimes, and Ryan’s now not there anymore, you’ve got some available time for your tracks and testing facility in Tallahassee, and you might be opening up some private deals?
Yeah, that’s right. We’re really excited now that the track doesn’t have to be as exclusive as it’s been in years. Now we’re able to open it up and do some things that we’ve long wanted to do and help all kinds of riders out and host some camps. It’s all on our website. It’s basically myself and my mom, who’s doing some coaching, just like the RCU (Ricky Carmichael University). It’s a page out of the RCU book, teaching and helping all the riders on things that they need help on, whether it’s cornering, training, starting, whatever. It will have less riders than the RCU and it’s at my place, so we’re really excited about that. I think we have tremendous opportunities out there. The Farm is a great place, has a lot of history, and it has what you need to get the job done. So we’re excited for that and looking forward to it. We really love helping riders, whether they’re older riders just having fun, or younger riders coming up through the ranks, and I think they’ll all have a good time when they come out to The Farm.
So it’s just riding camps?
No, we’ll be doing the training off the bike and just giving these guys some direction, which is really important. We all know how physically demanding the sport is for the most part, so we have Clint Friesen doing that aspect of the camps, which is a really important thing for the younger kids coming up and their parents. We’re really happy to have him aboard. We also have a Daytona Supercross warm-up camp coming up.
Man, I keep forgetting that we have a race coming up that we work on together.
It’s amazing to see how much this event has grown—this will be our sixth Ricky Carmichael Amateur Supercross at Daytona, which is pretty cool. The growth that it’s had and the manufacturers getting behind it to support it, it’s really humbling for me just seeing the growth of it all and the great partners that have jumped on board. I’m very thankful for that. We all know the history at Daytona and I think it’s important for the younger guys to understand the history there at Daytona.
Well, given time, your Daytona Amateur Supercross has worked out really well. Is time what we need for the Road to Supercross to really start to get some traction?
Absolutely. There are so many moving parts, so many aspects of the Road to Supercross, and what you want the riders to be exposed to along the way. It’s not perfect by any means, but we knew there was going to be some growing pains and we knew there were going to be things about it that worked really well. If you talk to some of the riders who have already come through, like Aaron Plessinger, he really had a great experience there. It’s not just going out and riding the track. It’s learning how to approach your weekend, doing interviews, dealing with fans and autograph signings, then getting in that race moment, that competitive environment under the lights and with a bunch of other hungry young riders—it’s things like that that are invaluable. No matter how much you practice in the off-season, it can’t prepare you like being behind the starting gate like that. You can’t just sign up and show up at Anaheim and be ready to race with everyone else.
I made the point awhile back, and no offense to the rider, who has been excellent the past year, but when Jessy Nelson was racing his first supercross and he cartwheeled right off the start, I wondered how he might have avoided that… And then this year, with some experience under his belt, he goes back to Anaheim and wins! Experience is invaluable, whether it’s on a stadium floor or on an arena floor.
You’re exactly right. It’s so hard to explain to some people, and I think the only people that can really speak intelligently about it and have that experience are the riders who have been there and competed at that level and they know what it’s like. But still, we know it definitely needs some tweaking and we’re here to evolve it and make it better and listen to people and do everything we can within reason. But I think it’s a great program, with real potential. I mean, you can’t just suit up for a MotoGP race, line up your bike next to Valentino Rossi and go race with him. In my opinion—and especially from a safety standpoint—we gotta get these guys’ feet wet first and protect them. I know I trained my tail off for my first supercross races and went out there and yard-saled it. I got caught up in the hype, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid seeing guys do.
That’s a great point. I still remember you snapping your handlebars in half at Indianapolis ‘97.
[Laughs] That’s right. There’s no amount of practice at the practice track that can expose you to what you’re gonna be exposed to at Monster Energy Supercross. So now you go through the AMSOIL Aarenacross races and there’s still some pretty good competition there—actually, really good competition—and get your feet wet, you kind of get the butterflies out and you know what to expect in supercross. Because when you go to supercross, it’s bigger and faster, and there’s much more competition.
Going back to your point, I’m sure we’ll see the fruits of the labor this year. This is really the first year where the guys coming up are coming through the Road to Supercross. And it’s cool to see them progress from the first round that they went to, to the third round that they went to. And that’s what it’s all about, whether it’s on the track in that race moment or being visible to the fans on TV and getting interviewed and just learning how it all works. You want these guys to be the best they can when they get to the Monster Energy Supercross, and think intelligently about the sport and their sponsors, themselves, and their future. And, like I always go back to, helping them race safe as well. They’ve got that experience and that’s what we’ve really got to focus on here.
Like I said, we’re happy with how it’s going, but there’s some things that need to be improved—we all knew that going into it. It’s a work in progress. But it’s going to be even better in the future, especially for the riders.
Good luck with your team in Dallas this weekend, see you at Daytona.
Thanks, see you on the infield!
Here’s the 411 on the Carmichael Camps: http://rickycarmichaeluniversity.com
The Carmichael Camps are unique opportunities to learn from the Greatest of All Time, Ricky Carmichael and his mom, Jeannie Carmichael, at Ricky’s personal track. “The Farm” has produced over twenty Championships from some of the sport’s biggest names, but this is the first time Ricky has opened the gates to his track outside of the professionals who ride and train there.
The camp curriculum is based on Ricky’s legendary riding program and gives riders a chance to learn tips, techniques, and drills straight from the pages of the Carmichael training logs. The on-track curriculum focuses on cornering, braking techniques, proper starting techniques and body positioning. These are just some of the areas that students will work on receiving instruction from Ricky and his mom. The end goal is to improve the rider’s skill set, which translates into confidence, better on-track results, and a safer rider overall.
Off-track, high-performance training is also included in the Camp with Clint Friesen. Clint specializes in using cutting edge technology to test and train athletes. He also helps guide may NFL, NBA Olympic and Division 1 collegiate programs in training. Clint will help riders learn the important aspects of training off the track including, hydration, nutrition, race preparation and other motocross-specific training elements that help focus on the core categories that motocross racers require.
Lunch will also be provided all three days. Onsite camping is available and included in the cost of camp. Parents and mechanics are encouraged to attend so they can learn the drills as well.
