Between the Motos: Davi Millsaps

I know the big deal was, “Davi hasn’t raced outdoors in four years.” Does that seem to make a difference or were you pretty comfortable immediately?
I raced the USGP in September, but I wouldn’t call that racing. I just rode. It’s been since 2012 since I’ve done a full outdoor race. I knew that would actually help as far as having the desire to do it. Outdoors is brutal, man. I haven’t had the best luck outdoors in my career with injuries, and that takes a toll on you. I’m having fun right now and that means a lot. I go out and do my motos during the week, and yeah it’s hot, yeah it’s brutal and yeah it can get boring sometimes, but at the end of the day I’m still having fun.

So the four years of not racing outdoors, it’s actually helped you more than it has made you rusty?
I would still say that there’s some rust. Just getting back into the swing of doing outdoors, and the travel to Canada and back home, just the mental side of all of that, I think it’s a little more grueling than supercross. All in all, the four years off, I don’t think it helped my career at all but it definitely helped give me more motivation for this year.

So I know KTM wanted you to do this, and you were a KTM rider in the U.S. in supercross. So how similar is your bike up there?
The only thing that’s changed on my bike from supercross until now is the shock and the tires.

Wow. So this is good stuff. Not some stocker.
Yeah, it’s my bike. Same bike. Forks obviously have some changes, and the shock is a spring shock instead of an air shock. Same motor and everything.

And you mentioned that KTM North America wanted this to happen. It wasn’t just a Canadian team approaching you—Roger DeCoster and people down here wanted it, too.
Yeah, I think they all wanted someone good to go to Canada for KTM to boost that program a little bit. I’m already signed back on for next year [with BTOSports.com KTM] but I don’t have a deal for outdoors, so they saw me as a good candidate! They approached me about it and I said I would think about it and look over the details. Florian from Canada met with me, and then I sat down with Jon-Erik [Burleson, KTM North America President]. Talking to Jon-Erik really helped me. I wanted to make KTM happy. They did me a huge favor this year and it helped me out a lot. I feel like it’s a good way to repay them. I’m doing this because I want to make them happy.

I know your real goal for 2016 was to earn a real salaried ride again for 2017, and not just race for bonuses like you did this year. So when you went down at Daytona, where you thinking, “Oh crap. I’m hurt. Here we go again.”
[Laughs] Uh, I wouldn’t say I was worried, worried. I had been talking with Forrest [Butler, BTOSports.com KTM team owner] and we both wanted to go another year. We were planning on this year as a building year for 2017. The goal was to do better than I did. It definitely sucked to get hurt, that’s for sure. I’ve been blessed with some great injuries for a while. [Laughs] But I wasn’t that worried. It is what it is.

So the first half of the season, you were winning heat races and getting top fives, that was enough to show what you could do and earn a 2017 ride?
I mean, I did a little. I won some heat races so that at least showed I could go fast for six laps! I wanted to do something over the summer, so this worked out great.

Well, this all begs the question. You’re riding well, KTM is happy, the Canadian schedule lightens up around August, and now KTM even has some empty spots over at the factory truck with Dungey out. Any chance we might see you racing a national this season?
Yeah, I mean, I would like to. It would be fun. The only downside to that is I would race nine weeks in a row. Outdoors, that gets a little tough, but I would do it for sure if KTM asked me. What’s a few motos more when you’re already done a few?

Let’s talk about traveling up there. With customs and stuff, is it significantly harder than going to races within the States?
It’s the same as when I’ve gone over to Australia, Switzerland and stuff like that. The first time I went up there, for Kamloops, I went through Calgary, and that was maybe the most I’ve ever been hassled anywhere. They took me into secondary inspection and had me in a separate room for a while. They went through every piece of paperwork I had on me. Stuff from KTM’s attorneys, they went through my contract, everything. I’m in kind of a weird situation up there because I’m working but I’m not getting paid anything in Canadian money. It’s kind of a weird category and they needed multiple people to figure it out. Since then I’ve been back three times and I’ve breezed through there. I’m also on my way to Global Entry. So that’s good!

So there was one glitch in the results this year. A rather extreme amount of positions for a red cross penalty—ten positions. Did that surprise you?
I mean, I’ve been racing against the same guy I raced forever as an amateur [Mike Alessi], and he did this stuff back then. It doesn’t surprise me at all. I just wasn’t expecting it that early, you know? But it is what it is. At the end of the day, I did it and I got penalized for it. Yeah, it was a pretty stiff penalty. I told them I would rather have them dock me a lap. Dock me a lap. I had lapped behind sixth so I would have gotten seventh, but a lap penalty sounds worse than ten positions, right?

Yes. So they basically docked you a lap and a half. And this was jumping with the red cross flag?
Right. Basically I couldn’t see it. It was a right-hander, so we were aiming right, and the flagger was on our left. Also, the dude who crashed was already back on his bike. So it should have been a yellow flag.