Colt Nichols is signed with Beta Motorcycles for 2024, but his contract with them didn’t include any of the SuperMotocross rounds. Determined not to miss out on the chance to score some serious coin, Nichols pulled together his resources, invested money into his own program, and it paid off, big-time. After borrowing a bike for Washougal and scoring solid points, he put together a deal with Bubba Pauli's Mad Parts Kawasaki team for SMX. He rode very well, taking ninth in the series after 10-10-5 finishes in the three races. Ninth overall pays 90k, and when combined with Colt's individual race purse money, he pocketed about $102,000 in three races!
There's more. Colt will go back to the Rick Ware Racing team for the remaining rounds of WSX, and in between he'll be testing the Beta. Don't forget that Colt started the year on factory Honda HRC. Quite a year!
After the finale Jason Weigandt caught up with Nichols to talk about it.
Racer X: Everyone knows Jett Lawrence made a ton of money, Haiden Deegan made a ton of money, they have a ton of money. Let’s talk about some other guys who made money. Colt Nichols, you said, ‘Show me the money,’ and we ran the tabulations; $90 grand baby!
Colt Nichols: We’ll take that all day, that’s a nice payday. I’m very excited about that.
You spent some money to make this happen.
Yeah, we were probably in, between travel and the bike and all that kind of stuff, about $20,000 or $25,000 at least. I knew that, getting last, we were breaking even at least, and I was okay with that. I didn’t want to go above $30K, because then I’m [potentially] losing a lot of money, but if I could stay around that range, I was okay with it. If I have to invest my money and know we’ll at least break even, that’s all I wanted. The fact that we came out on top, that’s awesome. Best case scenario.
And dude, you went 10-10 at Washougal, which probably earned you some more points. That could have been twenty more grand, just because of that. Unbelievable!
Yeah.
Did you get sixth in that last moto [tonight]?
Fifth.
Fifth! You were ripping!
Yeah, it was a good moto. I had AC [Adam Cianciarulo] right in front of me, we were battling pretty much the whole race. Coop [Cooper Webb] was right in front of him, and that was pretty cool. I was like, ‘Man I want to close that gap.’ I closed up on AC pretty well, I just couldn’t make the pass. I made a mistake with a few laps to go and he kind of gapped out, and then I noticed AP [Aaron Plessinger] wasn’t catching up and I was pretty content with where we were. It was cool. We went by the big board, and I could see with two laps to go we were in fifth and I was like, ‘I’ll take that.’ It was good though. Steady improvements each race, and it kinda sucks it’s over now. For the most part I’m so happy we did it.
You’ve got a totally different deal starting, you’re jumping on a Beta now.
Yeah, Beta next week. We’ll ride the two-stroke for fun I think, then the 450 the week after. We’ll go up there to Paso [Robles], test for a week, then bring it back to Southern California and ride. On that for the whole month of October, then back on the Kawasaki for a day or so for World Supercross. We’ll go to Dubai, race that, then back on the Beta, then hop back on the Kawi for the last one, then we’re done with the Kawi and its full Beta after that. I’m excited man.
I’m glad you did the math. You figured out, ‘Hey wait, it’s not just Eli Tomac who’s going to make money, not just Jett Lawrence.’ You swung for the fences, you bet on yourself.
Dude I’m so pumped. Even putting this thing together, it was really stressful at times. Before, this wasn’t even an option. I borrowed Swap’s [Donn Maeda] bike to go to Washougal. I was just like, ‘I just need to go, I’ll figure something out along the way.’ The first step was doing that, and I got really good points there like you said, and that got me in. Those points made a bigger difference than I thought. I wish I could have done more outdoors to bump myself up. But for the most part we cobbled it together, it was stressful, and these guys really stepped up. Rick Ware was a big part of that in letting me do all that in the first place. It was just awesome, I’m so glad I did it. I didn’t ever regret coming off the couch and racing. I think that’s nothing but a positive experience. It certainly was for me.
Beta and Rick Ware hooked you up. They could have said no.
Oh yeah, big time. Good people. I have Dave Cruz helping me during the week with suspension. On race weekends he was pretty clutch. My mechanic, [Taylor] Muto, was clutch. I put him in for overtime pretty hard. He earned the money he got for this, for sure.
