So you’re in charge of equipment?
Norfolk: He’s in charge of what we look like and getting everybody where they need to go, basically. He’s the front end, I’m the back end, I guess you would say.

Day: I couldn’t do it without him, for sure. He’s brought so much more to it than just what you can physically see.

Norfolk: We tag-team a lot of different fronts. It’s a lot of following up. A lot of cold calls. When we’re able to get people to the races, it’s like, “I didn’t realize you guys are like this.” Our guys do the exact same thing that the factory guys do. We go to the same races. It’s all the same, we just do it for pennies on their dollars. We have a budget that we have to adhere to.

How is this Gary guy now? Is he excited with the growth? Is he committed to it? A lot of times we see guys come in, they’re really excited about it, but then they realize how much money they’re spending after a few years.
Norfolk: He is, but he’s also an extremely good businessman. He’s got three or four very successful companies. When I came on it was more of a hobby and now I think he’s looking at it maybe there’s an opportunity to really do something special here. But it’s a challenge from a funding standpoint. We don’t have unlimited funds, and when we sat down two years ago, it was like, we’re not going to just go big and then stop. We had a three-year plan to try to really make this work, be professional, respectable, do a good job for our sponsors and to try to get some more funding. We’ve made monster leaps and bounds this year with funding the program. Our funding the program is a little different because we’ve been able to get some sponsors to come in and provide product and services for us to where we don’t have to spend the money. So even though we’re not getting the cash to run it, our spending is less this year by a significant amount. We have a couple sponsors that have already come on and said, “Hey, we want to do more next year.”

Day: It’s hard. I don’t know of many race teams that turn a big profit. Anything that is additional, there’s something more you can buy. There’s a better rider you can pay for. There’s better equipment you can purchase. So you have to have somebody that can’t be in it to make a profit. They have to really be in it for the love of the game, and see the marketing potential of it.

Norfolk: I think he’s proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. He’s also very proud that he can give these kids an opportunity on a solid motorcycle. What you rode today, it’s that way every weekend. It’s not we build it once and we just run it into the ground. It’s that way every weekend, allowing them to achieve their dreams. I think for him that is what this is about, and that’s why for me it was easy to get involved because I thought that was what this sport was missing, a stepping stone program that has a solid platform. We were upfront with all of our kids. We say: “We hope that you outgrow us quickly.” We want to be able to get you to the point where you deserve a salary and you’re making some money, we’d like to be able to fund that and do that and keep you, but if these guys come through this program and graduate up, that’s the best thing we could do. Same for the mechanics. They need to learn and be able to walk through that next door and be able to handle the pressure and everything that’s going on. Yes, we want to compete with those guys, but we’re not naïve about it. It’s somewhat unrealistic that we would be able to go get the same result spending what we spend versus the three or four million dollar team.

Skip, what got you back in? I know back when you left the sport you had little kids at home, and that was a big driver in you finding something that was local so you wouldn’t have to go on the road.
Norfolk: They’re not little anymore. My youngest is a senior in high school this year. There’s almost four lives going on. My wife stayed at home and raised the kids and now she went back to school and she’s got her career in radiology in the medical field. On occasion we’d meet in the kitchen for dinner. I missed racing and I wanted to help bridge that gap. When I was working in the clothing industry we had these kids that came through that were spectacular young athletes. I refer to them as factory amateur racers. They’d be a Kawi guy or a Yamaha guy as an amateur, but they’d go to the pros and they’d have nothing. They went from full factory amateur ride to nothing. I think some of the teams, not all of them, but some of the teams would build a good product at the beginning of the year, but after four races, as things deteriorate and go down they weren’t able to maintain that. The one thing from racing that I knew in order for this to be truly successful, chassis-wise the bikes need to be identical, race and practice. Then motor-wise they’d need to be the same character but maybe just a little bit less. They can’t be two completely different motorcycles. If that happens, the guys show up at the race and they’ve got to learn their motorcycle. In timed practice they’re sitting 18th and get a bad gate pick, you never have a chance to succeed. We had a goal to put every penny we had into the motorcycle and to build a stable platform. I look at what we do and it hasn’t changed forever. Our biggest thing is to eliminate excuses, and the motorcycle is the biggest excuse any rider could have.

Who are you guys looking at down the road? Do you have these guys re-signed for next year? It’s kind of that time of year where we’re already starting to look at ’18.
Norfolk: It’s getting to that time of year. We’re not in the position to where we can buy our talent, by any stretch of the imagination. We understand that if an opportunity presents itself for these guys to get onto a factory-supported program, we’re not going to stand in their way. We usually have to wait for a few other cards to fall before we can go down that path. But we’re trying to bump it up. Our program came together really late this year. We’re trying to move it up to where hopefully by June or July we can really start to put our athletes together. Right now we love the two guys that we have. Obviously we expect more, but if you don’t expect more, why are you going to show up?

What are the biggest things you see different from the old days versus now?
Norfolk: The racing hasn’t changed. The gate drops, checkered flag comes out, the baddest dude wins, every time. I think when you start talking at the tip of the pyramid, the intensity level, the commitment, the focus, the dedication, and the sacrifice—I think that’s one thing everybody forgets is the sacrifice. To do what those guys do at that level, it’s intense. That intensity is extremely elevated from what I remember back in those days. The training program is crazy. Jeremy [McGrath] took it to another level racing, and then you had Ricky [Carmichael] and you had James [Stewart] and it was all about the technique. Then Ricky decided, screw you guys, I’m going to be the fittest dude in the world, too. And he elevated it again. It’s just been this leap frog and leap frog and leap frog, and if you want to compete at the top you have to be in epic shape—mentally more than anything else. It’s a huge sacrifice to be mentally prepared. So that part’s changed extremely, I think. The biggest thing I see, and I don’t know if it’s right—I don’t believe it is—I see these guys, especially the younger kids, all they do is train, train, train, ride. They do six big events a year. When we were coming up we raced all the time. It was, let’s go to this local race. Let’s go here. Let’s race, race, race. And there was a lot of play riding on the bikes, where I think you learn more out play riding whether you have woods or hills or whatever it is. You learn your motorcycle. The biggest thing that I see with these kids coming up, and granted there’s always an exception, but the bulk of the kids that are coming up have no idea how to race, and I think for the most part they’re not mental giants.

I remember a lot of days out riding the hills with Jeremy [McGrath] and he’d be in a creek bed and find a little lip and jump from here over to there and we’d all try to do it. We’d try to out-do each other. You really learn how to make your bike do what you want. Then like you said, the technique. You can watch guys today and you can look out on a track and go, that guy really shouldn’t be going that fast. His technique is not good, but he’s hauling because the bike lets him—until it doesn’t.
Norfolk: It’s just like any sport, I think. I love baseball so I’ll equate it to baseball. You’ve got these young kids that come up and they’re great AAA ball players. They come in and for the first say year, they kill it. But then the pitchers figure them out. In order for them to go to the next level, they have to change their fundamentals because they had some fundamental issues whether it was a swing or how they were doing it or how they ride their motorcycle that is holding them back. Because amateur racing is all sprints, it’s how fast you can go, technique doesn’t matter. How fast you go because you can hold on for four laps, eight laps. But out here it’s different. You have to be a complete program here. Motorcycle, athlete, rider, technique. If any one of those things fall short, you’re falling short. It’s such a challenge for those guys because they feel like, I’ve gotten here because I can do what I do. I go, you’re absolutely right, but what you’re doing is not going to get you where you want to go. It’s really difficult for them to mentally go, “Okay, I have to change the way I’m riding in order to do that.” I don’t remember that as much before because I think the guys actually raced more often and it was something that just naturally evolved as they continued to race. But these guys are just out burning laps. They go, “I put in six hours on my motorcycle this week.” That’s three hours too many.