Another race, another win for Marvin Musquin, who now has three victories in a row counting Red Bull Straight Rhythm, the Bercy-Lille Supercross, and now the Geneva Supercross over the weekend. He was also on the podium at the SMX Cup and Monster Energy Cup. That makes him a real dark-horse contender heading into the 2017 Monster Energy Supercross Championship. Lewis Phillips of MXVice.com caught up with a (not-surprisingly) happy Marvin after the race. You can listen to the full audio here or read about it below.
Racer X: Much of the same from you, really. Continued the streak, won everything and completed a perfect off-season.
Marvin Musquin: That’s awesome. I’m really happy. It’s really good to do those off-season races. It’s good practice, good racing. In France and here in Switzerland we got really nice tracks. They got rough, got rutted. It’s good training. Good to see how the bike is working. At the same time you don’t want to get hurt doing those races so it’s good to end up winning and be safe. I made a mistake during the last main event. I went off the track. It was a little sketchy and I kind of scared myself but we’re all safe now. That’s the goal.
I guess this acts as good practice because obviously you’ve got hard, slick tracks in California. This is a bit of practice for East Coast maybe?
Exactly. This track here in Geneva kind of gets a little slippery sometimes. It’s pretty warm inside the stadium and the dirt kind of dries out towards the weekend. We had some slick spots and other spots where it was pretty tacky. The whoops were actually difficult. You could see [Justin] Brayton at the end stop skimming and start jumping them.
You use this as training. Is it maybe a help to you have riders in front of you, bad starts like you had this weekend? Obviously riding around alone out front you might as well be out in California at the test track.
Yeah, that’s right. In France in Lille I got holeshots and I was leading every single lap. This weekend I was 11th in the first lap of the main event on Friday. Today and Saturday I was second behind Justin [Brayton]. I had to work for it for sure. Justin is a great rider. He loves Geneva here. We had a really clean battle. I’d like to congratulate him and also Malcolm [Stewart]. We all had a fun weekend once again.
When I spoke to you in Lille you said you busted out that quad consistently because if it was training in America you’d have to do that. I guess it was the same case with the triple-quad-quad section?
Exactly. If you time the first triple good then that will be nice for the quad and quad after that. Yesterday on Friday it was really tough. The first triple was so chewed out. It was difficult to go over that. Today it was a little bit easier. Definitely really good practice. It’s pretty tight over there and you’ve got to work for it.
Obviously that was the section tonight where you cut off Brayton. I’m guessing you were just trying to pinch off his line and make sure he couldn’t come back in the next 180?
Yeah, exactly. It was some really tight turns. You had to be on point and make sure you hit those jumps every lap. It started to get bumpy and rutted. That track was tough. You had to be really precise and on your game. I’m really happy. Justin rode good, but physically I was actually good and consistent. That’s the goal, too. There are many good riders but to be consistent for a whole moto is a different story.
Did anyone mention anything to you about being docked for that? Obviously you missed three or four jumps but didn’t gain any positions. When you went off the track passing Brayton.
No, I was already ahead of him. So I went off and kind of rolled on the side of the track and get back on it safe. I don’t think I did anything wrong.
Jumping through the whoops has kind of been your thing in America. Obviously you’re sticking to that and that ended up proving to be the faster line tonight because everyone did it.
It depends how the whoops are. In France there was no way to jump the whoops because there was like an angle on the bottom. Today it was an option, too. I was able to do both at one point, so it’s good.