Yoshimura Suzuki’s Blake Baggett was expected to do well at Daytona, but the question was how well. Over the last month, the Monster Energy Supercross 450 rookie has been around the top five, but his “Daytona bump” put him in position to possibly podium. After a tremendous battle, that’s what he did, a first on a 450 in his career. We found him at the Suzuki truck after the race.
Racer X: The Daytona bump. I was trying to guess how many positions the Daytona bump would give you, but you weren’t giving me any info.
Blake Baggett: I can’t give you stuff! You won’t have a job!
C’mon, man, people have fantasy teams to run!
Well, that’s for fantasy—that’s for guessing. If I give you information, it’s no longer fantasy.
But did you feel that you would do extra well here or are we making this “Baggett will be good at Daytona thing” up?
I felt like I would do well here, but then I started thinking, man, I’ve got to go 20 laps and I’ve never rode this thing outdoors. I went to Milestone this week, put down about 6 or 8 laps.
Milestone? Is that even rough, by the way?
No, I couldn’t even find a bump. I’ve never rode it outdoors. I was just kind of guessing. But coming in, I really like this place and get along with it good. I just knew that I had to find smooth lines and just get along with it. You can’t argue with this track; it’ll win every time. Definitely something that I’ve got to build on, that I got to work on, but I feel like it’s definitely going to be a solid outdoors season. Then again I’m excited to get back to indoors and prove some of those fantasy racers and keyboard warriors wrong. The way I look at it is I was up front and got to run with the front guys here so we’ll just go back and we’ll do a little more testing on the supercross track this week and try to come out with a top five or maybe hit the podium next weekend.
At a regular supercross track?
Yeah, a regular supercross track, with like a roof over it! I haven’t had the greatest luck at it [supercross], haven’t had the greatest things happen, but its there. It’s riding a motorcycle. I’ve been close this year, got a fourth at the one race behind [Trey] Canard. Kept him in sight and then made a little mistake with three or four laps to go. So it’s there, just got to be a good night. For this first season I’m trying to make it to all 17 of them. That’s the goal, leave healthy. That’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we’re going to do. If I don’t feel it, then I don’t feel it.
This race, there was so much battling—it was crazy. Do you remember where you were or who you passed or anything?
Not really! I remember it was chaos with [Ryan] Dungey and [Cole] Seely, and then [Weston] Peick sent it in there. [Chad] Reed sent it in there. Shorty [Andrew Short] was up there, I think he was leading it. It was just chaos. Then [Eli] Tomac came in there and it was a mess. Like Eli said, it was just an all-out brawl out there. By the time you took a tear-off there was already dirt and mud back on your goggles so you were waiting to pull another one. But kind of got shuffled back and was able to capitalize on Seely going down and then was able to work my way back. Passed Short and passed Peick, so just basically rode clean, rode my own race and let everything happen around me and found myself back in third.
Then you tried to go back after Tomac I guess?
Yeah, tried to. Tried to give it a run. Started finding some pretty good lines there toward the end and made a run back at it and got messed up in a few sections and brought it home to third.
I heard you say in the press conference you guys have done hardcore work on testing and making changes and trying to figure it all out.
Oh yeah. We’ve changed the bike every weekend, pretty much every session out since round 1. We just keep searching.
Like every practice session?
Yeah, every practice session trying something.
I feel like you’re pretty good with testing though. Just knowing how last year you started out so bad outdoors and got the bike better quickly. You seem to know what you’re looking for. A lot of young dudes do not.
I think I’m better at knowing what I want at the outdoors, just a little bit more comfortable and can force the issue in some places and know where my strongpoints are. Indoors it’s tough because there’s only that one line, the one groove, you get out of it and you go backwards. It’s always a freight train. There’s not much passing. The track’s narrow. You’ve got to set it up different. We’ve just been trying to get it setup to where I’m like, “This is it, don’t touch it.” Everybody has ideas and I’m willing to try them. It’s the first year so let’s keep trying them and you can always go back.
Talk about vision. Both you and Tomac were saying it. Could you not even see half the time?
You could see but it’s like looking through the bottom of a Coke glass sometimes. Dirt would hit and just smear the tear-off. It wasn’t dirt sticking to it, in some senses, but it would just smear the top of the tear-off. I even tried wiping it a few times and it just made it worse, so you had to pull it. By the time you pulled it, you look up, boom, hit again. I was out of tear-offs quite soon, maybe lap nine, but that was my choice. Scott asked me how many tear-offs I wanted on there and you can’t really run a lot here because of the light, the dark soil and the ruts. You can’t see how deep the rut is, or if there’s bumps in the bottom of the rut. So I chose to only run that many tear-offs and it was definitely solid. Running out of tear-offs didn’t affect my performance whatsoever, my goggles were fine. I felt good and just had a solid night.
I’m hearing guys say that everyone thinks this is the gnarliest, roughest thing ever, but actually being smart is almost more important. Daytona is not really about who’s the strongest, but being smart, picking lines and figuring it out, I’m hearing a lot of guys say how critical that is.
It’s rough, but it’s not the roughest thing I’ve seen. By all means it is not. You watch some of the GP races, those are rough!
Did you watch last week’s GP?
Yeah, it’s brutal. Those are rough tracks.
Yeah, and you raced des Nations in the sand.
Yes, and that’s a rough track. Anybody that says they raced some sand, it’s nothing until you go over there. That’s why those guys are no slouches over there. Everybody thinks we’re going to go over there and crush them, but they’re human just like we are and they’re fast. They’re bad dudes just like we are. You’ve got to beat them on their off-days and they beat us on our off-days. When we both have good days it’s an all-out battle. Definitely here, it’s not the roughest thing but it’s rough and I think it makes it rougher because everybody’s kind of on the supercross side of settings and bike, and all of a sudden you’re supposed to go from first and second gear to fourth gear wide open. If it was in the middle of the outdoor season I don’t think anybody would say it was that fast or rough, it’s more that it’s just throwing the guys off.
How critical is it to be sharp about changing lines and missing holes and all that stuff?
Definitely critical. With the vision, if you’re behind somebody it’s definitely tough to miss the holes and stuff like that. You’ve got to try to pick and choose where you’re going to go and be smart about it.
