Honda HRC announced on Friday that Chance Hymas will not be returning to the amateur ranks and will make his 250SX debut in 2023 in “select” races on the East Coast. Hymas won the Supercross Futures championship last year but then struggled in what was ultimately his final run at the Monster Energy AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship in August. He rebounded well though to snag a dominant victory at the Scouting Moto Combine at Ironman Raceway just a few weeks later, then made his professional debut the following week at Fox Raceway, going 20-11 for 15th overall. Now he will turn his full attention to professional racing with some supercross action coming right around the corner.
We were able to chat with Hymas on Friday after the announcement to hear all about it.
Racer X: Let’s first talk about 2022 just a little bit. Obviously, the Supercross Futures win. Loretta’s maybe didn’t go how you wanted it to, but then you turned it around and you won the Combine. You made your pro debut. A little bit up and down, but are you kind of happy with it overall?
Chance Hymas: Yeah, overall it was good, even with the bad times it helped me grow as a person. Overall, it was a good year. The Supercross Futures went really well for me. I won the finale and I felt like I made a lot of big gains for supercross. Obviously, the outdoors for me was a struggle, but I feel like towards the end, before I went and made my pro debut, I felt like I made a lot of good ground. It’s starting to come back to where I was at. Even at Pala, I felt like I had a little bit more there on the table. I felt like I left some there, but it was fun. I really had no expectations going into that round. But the year was good. Even now after outdoors, I did some off-road races and went home, and hung out with my family and just kind of took it all in. For me, it was a long year, but now I’ve kind of debriefed and the off-season has been going good for me.
Just being able to do the one national, it might be tough to kind of take anything from it, but were there some things that you picked up that you feel like is going to help you as you make your pro debut fully?
Yeah. There were a lot of things. For me, I went in with no expectations and there’s so many things you can work on. The pace was a lot higher than I expected, and I feel like that’s for everybody. You don’t really know until you do it. But for me, obviously I need to be in better shape. I was racing men. I’m excited. I think I’m starting to come around and get a lot stronger. I feel like by the time outdoors starts, I’ll be in good shape. It was a good learning experience for me.
They say that the plan for you is to do some select east coast rounds. So, how are you preparing for that? Is it really trying to put in the motos to get as prepared as possible, or are you just trying to take it one step at a time?
Yeah. Last year I feel like that was my one step at a time thing, and just learning supercross for me now. Obviously, there’s still stuff I need to work on, especially with the whoops and corners and all that. Right now, I’m doing a full boot camp trying to get ready for round one basically, if I was going to do that. The goal is to be ready whenever. But I want to be as ready as possible, so right now I’m doing motos out of the Dog Pound now with Michael Byrne. It’s been good.
Talking about SX Futures and carrying it into this year, is it going to take some of that pressure off for when you do actually make that first race debut that you’ve already had the experience inside of the stadium and done those tracks?
Yeah, for sure. Racing inside the stadium is a different element, especially racing with Tuff Blocks on both sides of the jumps. The track gets a lot smaller. You’ve got the fans in there. It definitely took a little bit of the edge off. I feel like for me, I’ve got the little bit of experience I needed that will help ease it in a little bit. The SX Futures will be a good program.
You said that you didn’t put expectations on yourself at Fox Raceway. What kind of expectations do you want to put on yourself for this outdoor season?
I want to come in ready. I want to be a top guy. I want to be in title contention, obviously with only one round it’s kind of hard to judge that. But for me, I have high expectations. I feel like I can fulfill them, and that’s what I want to do. So, my goal is to work my butt off from now until the start of outdoors and hopefully everything goes to plan.
