Triumph dropped the news last week that they and Evan Ferry had mutually agreed to part ways after just one race together. Evan, son of Tim Ferry, has had some stops and starts as a pro and was hoping this brand-new OEM was going to be the launching point to a great pro career. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and we had Evan on the PulpMX Show to tell us what happened from his point of view.
Keep in mind in all these sorts of things, there are non-disclosure agreements signed on both sides so what Evan could say was limited. Here’s some of that interview and you can hear the rest on pulpmxshow.com.
Racer X Online: You made the news. Not in a good way. You decided to leave Triumph. Parted ways mutually. We saw the press release. You had another year on your deal. You had been there for a year and a half already. You can understand there’s a lot of fans of the sport being like, WTF? What led you and Triumph to sort of break up here? This had to be a hard decision. Give it to us from your side of things.
Evan Ferry: You gave me kind of a loaded question here. Obviously, I’ve been with the Triumph guys for over a year and a half now. A lot of people thought that I came in there around October, November, and then kind of came into the supercross season, but I’ve been a part of even the development process from over a year and a half ago, honestly. I think it was like a year and seven or eight months. It was a super cool opportunity working with all those guys, and especially the guys from Europe and doing a lot of awesome stuff. I rode eight different bar bends last year. I did a lot last year. Not a lot of racing, obviously. I wanted to do a lot more racing. Over the past few months, it’s been pretty hard but coming to the decision, I felt at peace with the decision. To me, I really wanted to start talking about the things coming into the future. I don’t have a lot of plans. Really actually no plans as of right now, but I’m excited to get back on a motorcycle. I had a lot of fun riding today. We can probably dive a little bit deeper into a little bit of your question, but I feel like you asked me about three questions in one.
Obviously, it didn’t work out. You rode Detroit, won the LCQ, hit the wall.
I didn’t just hit the wall, I moved it. I moved the whole stadium a couple inches there.
That was a tough way to start, but I thought everybody thought you rode okay and it was a good start for you. Obviously, you had to take some time off the bike. Then was it just not meshing with people there, not meshing with the bike? What made you decide as a family unit to be like, this isn’t working out, I got to do my own thing?
I’d love to go back to Detroit. Trying to still remember things that happened that day, it’s a little foggy. Obviously, it was a super high-stress day. Not the way I wanted my first race to go, but it was definitely an experience. That was probably one of the worst times I’ve ever rode in my life. I went back and watched it a few days after the race and I’m like, man, who is riding my motorcycle? I was not happy with my riding. Obviously, the prep was maybe not up to how I wanted it to be coming in, getting a little bit of a late start. But at the same time, I still feel like with the circumstances that I had, I pushed through as hard as I could. I took a little bit of time off after Detroit obviously with the head, the concussion and everything. For whatever reason, getting back on the bike, I still wasn’t feeling like myself. Then obviously I had the crash in Dallas, which honestly was one of the weirdest crashes. It was really odd. I thought I had the jump. I never posted the video. Never really talked about that very much. Just clipped the jump coming out of a rhythm that I thought I was making. I was maybe a little bit relaxed and maybe a little bit too confident with where I was going to land, and ended up crashing and separating my shoulder. After that, for me, obviously it’s a hard situation to talk about. Just on the mental side of everything, it’s been tough. Obviously, there’s a lot of talk on the internet and there’s a lot of talk of burning the bridges and all of that.
Stay off the internet. I’d suggest that, for sure.
Yeah. Honestly, I haven’t read anything on Instagram hardly at all. I finally commented back to one guy today just because I was kind of bored, on my post today. Just wasn’t comfortable. I wouldn’t even say that it was anything to do with the bike or personnel. I really just wasn’t feeling like myself.
Mentally and physically, or both?
Honestly right now, physically I feel like I’m the strongest I’ve been. I’ve done a lot of cycling, a little bit of gym, but honestly really just living life. I actually even started running. I had some bone deformities in my feet when I was little and I had surgery, so my feet flex maybe a little bit different than the normal person, so running has always been super hard. So I went back and kind of enjoyed a little bit of the simpler things, hanging out a lot with my family. I’ve started running a little bit and cycling a bunch. Honestly hopping on the 450, I kind of thought that it was going to be tough. I’m a little bit of a smaller guy. I thought it was going to be tough but I felt probably the strongest on the bike today than I probably have in a long time. So, I’m really excited to see. Hopefully I do land somewhere. If I don’t, I’m going to try my best to get out there and race and do the best I can and hopefully land somewhere else at some point.
So safe to say, obviously this has been a little while in the works before the press release came out, mentally you feel like a bit of a weight is lifted off of you? Like in a better place mentally? Do you feel a little… Relief isn’t the right word, or maybe it is. Do you feel like mentally you’re happier right now than you were?
Yeah, for sure. It was a really hard year. Mentally you’ve got to think about obviously none of the races that I did last year went very well. I was basically in the dark for a whole year. I couldn’t talk about what I was doing, and then even for a long period of time I couldn’t even talk about where I was even living. A lot of that is really hard on somebody, that I feel like I’ve always strived off of a little bit of the energy coming off of the social media. I think a lot of it was tough, just not being able to say anything or post that I’m working out or doing all these things. I’ll just go into it very briefly, but I never really post anything of me cycling or doing the gym and doing the work that you do behind the scenes. You call them Instabangers, or whatever you want to call them. Some people want to see you working hard, but at the same time, I think a lot of the people on social media and Instagram want to see the whips. They want to see you railing some turns and stuff like that. Maybe I need to go back and I need to start posting some more of me cycling and doing the gym work and doing all the stuff off the bike.
That’s the age we live in now. It is a little bit of that world where what you see on Instagram is what you think of someone. You’re like, wait, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’m not saying in Evan’s case, just in general. Like these hot chicks. It’s a fake reality.
I feel like I lost a lot of, I wouldn’t say the confidence, but a little bit of the confidence I feel like I lost it there last year, just not being able to post, not being able to do the Instabangers as Steve calls them. I find a lot of joy in you’re riding, you’re doing your motos, you’re doing your three 35’s or whatever you’re doing that day. After you’re done doing your motos, you go and rail a couple turns and throw some whips and on the way home, you’re sitting there and you’re editing your videos. You’re doing all of that I feel like to promote yourself and promote your brand and all of that. I feel like that’s a huge part of the sport and where I feel like it’s kind of gone here recently. I feel like a lot of the social media stuff obviously with [Haiden] Deegan and some of those guys having huge following platforms, I’m really into that but also being into the working side of everything also.
In your development, you had some injuries that knocked you off the bike for a long time, and then Triumph was like, don’t race. We don’t have a bike for you yet. So, you were kind of doing a GasGas thing, and then you were doing some Yamaha stuff. Like you said, none of those races went well. Time off the bike, and all of that. So that was a tough hurdle. You had some injuries as well. So, it ain’t easy to just ramp up and do it. But again, you guys signed the contract and you went down that road and that’s the things that you agreed to do. But it is tough for a developing young rider to not really race much.
Yeah. I feel like I’ve maybe been in the dark. Maybe I haven’t been talked about very much. I feel like there were moments where I was like, I’d rather not talk about it. Let’s just turn the page. Let’s just keep going. But I’ve heard stuff. My mom has talked about it. My dad has talked about it. The comments and everything on the social media, and talking about how I’ve burned bridges and all this stuff. Honestly, the Husky thing, the bridge wasn’t burned. People were talking about how I went to three different teams or something crazy, and that I burned another bridge at Yamaha, which is also not true. Danny Lewis from the NSA team was the first person to text me and said, “Hey, if you need anything, I’m here to help.” Danny also lent me a bike for Salt Lake City last year. So, a lot of those rumors and everything that are going around, the Husky thing and all that, none of those bridges were burned. I think that’s a big thing for me. Seeing all the comments and everything, it’s almost more motivation because at this point, all of it obviously doesn’t really matter, all the comments and everything. Honestly, I’m just excited where this is going to go, whether I end up somewhere else or what really happens. It’s kind of up in the air.
Are you prepared to show up and privateer it at the nationals on the East Coast, if it comes to that?
If it comes to it, yeah, for sure, obviously. Racing has been my life since I was three years old. I'm sitting here playing dirt bikes on video games before I even get on this phone call. So, it’s everything that I basically live, eat, sleep, breathe. Everything. So, obviously to be out there racing in the pros is exactly where I want to be. So, however we have to do it, I’m ready to do it.
Is it possible you race any supercross this year, or no? Just can’t find a team, can’t find a deal?
If somebody was offering, I would be on the track tomorrow if I could. I’m really game for whatever.
So, you’re physically and mentally ready to race a supercross if it happened?
I would say physically and mentally, for sure. I’ve been doing everything I can to be as ready as possible. I feel like I’m mentally definitely in a pretty good spot now. I’m excited to see what comes about this.
With outdoors about a month away, do you have a loose plan, like a cutoff? If it doesn’t look like there’s any teams available, we’re going to go privateer route, what track would you want to show up at?
There’s a little bit between me and my dad, and then obviously a little bit with my agent, Jimmy Button, too. I’m kind of trying to wait a couple more days to even make that loose plan and see if anything pops up. But obviously going all the way out to Pala, I don't know if that’s really realistic. But doing Budds Creek, doing Unadilla, doing Ironman, doing those East Coast rounds, obviously those are on the table either way. Whether I end up somewhere else, those races will happen, for sure.