Phil Nicoletti is back at the races! His surgically repaired arm didn’t give him much time on the bike or on a supercross track, but he manned up, flew to Wales, and raced the 250 class of the FIM World Supercross Championship for his FXR/Club MX Yamaha team.
We’ll have Phil’s regular column back on Friday where he takes your questions. Enjoy this post-race coverage right now, though, with questions from Steve Matthes.
Okay, 11th in the first one, and then after that, I’m not even sure.
Nicoletti: Yeah, I don’t know…I think 10, 13 15? I was stuck on the outside of the gates, I tried to make something happen. I got out of these pretty good but honestly once you’re in ninth, tenth, whatever, you’re not doing nothing. It’s a goat trail. It was kind of a kill fest. I was like, “Dude why are we trying to kill each other?” You know it’s a goat path. I looked at the payout and it’s like $40 between positions. You don’t need the eighty bucks that bad. It was alright. I enjoyed the World Supercross thing, but I didn’t enjoy the track. We need to make some changes, but they’re super receptive of the changes, so we’ll see.
Like I told JB [Justin Brayton], I would like to see a tougher track and longer mains.
Yeah, I think the 250s can do 8-8-12 (minutes). I’d like them to do 8-8 then let the 450s go and do their 10-10. Kind of build suspense and let people figure the points out. I don’t even know what was going on out there! Who was in sixth or whatever? So, I think that could be a good change, but like I said, I think they’re good with doing stuff like that (making changes). The biggest thing was the track was really hard to actually race. There wasn’t anything you could do, if you weren’t in the top four or five, it was over. It was okay. This whole thing for me was a bit rushed, only had a week on supercross.
How’s the arm?
It’s a little sore right now. It’s all happening pretty fast for me right now. I don’t have the fast twitch muscles yet, and I just wanted to come here, get through it safe. I almost had some death experiences with other riders and stuff, but we survived.
There was a small pocket of cheers for you in opening ceremonies. I was impressed.
To be honest, I met a lot of fans and a lot of people in the streets that were fans of your janky (Pulp) radio show. It was quite awesome, I’m really happy I got to come here and meet these people. I mean, people took planes, trains and automobiles to get here. It was pretty wild. I hope they enjoyed it. I hope next year if they come back there’s a lot to improve on, but the crowd was pretty wild, and I thought that was bad ass.
