We’ve tried to pin down Jalek Swoll several times on the process of putting an all-new motorcycle and program on his shoulders, (his teammate Evan Ferry is a complete rookie, so the expectations come higher for Swoll). Most of the time, Jalek just shrugs it off. We’ve been waiting for stories of being way behind and big-time scrambling to make it work, or just the simple pressure to deliver. Swoll never really bites. He makes it sound like there’s not much different from this off season through his previous runs with Rockstar Energy Husqvarna.
Maybe that’s the best way, because even when the pressure could have been on for the Detroit opener, Swoll didn’t see it. He did an amazing job, coming from the back—he was stopped in the first-turn crash but not completely down like others—to sixth, which has to be as good as Triumph could probably hope to be in its very first race in this discipline. For the brand, this was a momentous occasion in its 102-year history. For Swoll, it had to be treated like any other race, and he actually wanted more than sixth.
“I felt good, which was the main thing on a gnarly track like this, which can easily bite anyone,” he said to our Steve Matthes. “Like I felt really good. I feel like if I would have not been in all the chaos in that first turn, we could have had a shot at the box tonight. So, it is what it is. My goal was top five for this first round and to fall in the first turn and get sixth, one [position] off, I think we're in a decent spot.”
As for the historic part?
“I'd like to think that when I get older, maybe I'll recognize a little bit more,” Swoll says. “But no, I mean, I've been a part of the process and been kind of just developing the bike and I see all the hard work these guys put in and there's so many people, like from the UK that even came over today. Just because they're hands on, you know, everybody's touched this bike and in some sort of way. The motor guys, suspension guys, chassis, everything. Dude, it's been a process, but we've had a really good base package. Developing the bike and developing with the new team, it's been fun.”
Matthes pinned down Swoll for less corporate speak and asked him to identify a specific area where Swoll is impressed with the bike.
“I feel like my turns are kind of back to normal,” he says. “I can kind of just [use] momentum and lean. So that was good. Yeah, I'm trying not to be corporate but dude, the bike's good. The bike is good! We're in a good spot. Obviously, there's some things that we can tweak and make better, but I feel like, to get caught in the first turn and come back to sixth, it's competitive.”
Triumph Team Manager “Scuba” Steve Westfall visited the PulpMX Show on Monday to talk about the weekend. Triumph made it to the race, but the work has really only begun, in a way.
“I already had a laundry list today going, just from watching the race and stuff,” said Westfall on Monday. “We still need to work on the chassis a little more, in my opinion. It works good here [at the test track] but then when we got there [to the race], we made quite a bit of changes over the course of the day. We got better every time we did it. It's hard because, you know, when you haven't put the bike through a race conditions, you can practice all day long. We've had Phil [Nicoletti] and Jeremy [Martin] come over and ride with them. We’ve gone down to MTF. But it's not the same when you put it in a race condition. They try harder, I guess. Not that they're not trying hard practicing, but it's a different situation. Need to work on chassis a little bit still. I feel we need to work on the motor, some chassis and motor.”
Yup, all of it. But at least Triumph is now in the same race as all the other teams and brands. Using each race to gain knowledge and get better.
“I mean, everybody involved in this whole program has done an excellent job to get to where we are today,” says Westfall, who says he’s been in so many Zoom meetings that he’s pretty much “Zoomed out” right now. “But that's how the communication works so well, honestly, even though they're over there [UK], they have spent a lot of time over here lately. We had a one guy Connor, he was over here for I bet you Danner almost six weeks, you know, and then the head engineer John, he's been over and the engine guy's been over. They send people over here to make sure that we have what we need. It's a pretty well-oiled machine even though it may not look like it at times!”
Triumph also now gets to take the experiments out of the lab and into the unpredictable world of racing. Swoll was good, but poor Ferry put in his best laps when he needed them, in the LCQ, to make the main, only to be completely pulverized in the first turn.
“Rookies, you know, it's like trying to drill it into him ‘Hey, we need you to race every race, get your feet wet, make however many rounds it is--the nine and 11 plus three [SX, MX, SMX] and just make every single one of those. When next year comes, you'll be a whole new person. There's no expectations, just please try to make every race.’ It was unfortunate he went down in the first turn. But his LCQ was the best he had rode all day.”
Ferry went to social media to say he’s okay after being drilled into the wall outside of turn one. He hopes for better in his second race, and he and his new team have two weekends off to build on what they learned at round one. We were all looking for stories of parts coming in late and Triumph scrambling to be ready for its first race in this space. In the end, it looked just like any other race for any other brand. That’s really the biggest accomplishment the team could get.
