After signing with a two-year, SX-only deal with Liqui Moly Beta before 2024, Colt Nichols ended up breaking up with the team following one SX season. Colt 45 is now going to be on the HEP Twisted Tea Suzuki starting at Unadilla and then throughout the SMX Playoffs and 2025 as well. We had Nichols on the Pulpmx Show to take us through the departure from Beta and the new team.
Racer X Online: You really made some news. I’ll be honest. I was surprised. You didn’t have a great supercross season. New bike, new team. It was coming along. Some good, some bad. You had another year in your deal. You could have stayed there for supercross only. It’s probably decent money. But you picked up with the Twisted Tea guys. Take us through leaving Beta, how those guys were, and then getting the call from Dustin to jump on the Twisted Tea bike.
Colt Nichols: First and foremost, I’m super excited to be a part of this team. I’ve always talked to these guys, ever since I was moving up to 450. We’ve always been in that conversation with HEP and Dustin (Pipes). So to finally be a part of the team is honestly really cool. It’s just a huge thank you to the guys I was currently with – O’Neal, HJC – on the personal side that let me pursue this opportunity. That was huge. They definitely didn’t have to do that. They’re such good people. All the guys at O’Neal are really, really awesome people.
Everyone there was just great and let me out of those deals to pursue this. It was kind of weird the way it happened, honestly. The Beta deal was a two-year deal. It was some good money. I thought all right. Even leaving Salt Lake, I was like, trials and tribulations. We had a lot of ups, a lot of downs. More downs than ups throughout supercross. It was frustrating, for sure. But at the end of the day, I thought we were trying to check some things off the list and it was getting a little bit better. A few weeks after, we were just still having a few little things that were going on, within the team, the bike, things like that. They felt like they wanted to go a little different direction with me for the next year and that ultimately led to me being like, maybe we need to go a whole other direction with the thing in general. Kind of a weird deal, honestly. But I wish those guys the best. Even with Benny (Bloss), it was fun having Benny as a teammate. I’ve known Benny for years. He obviously rode the thing really, really well. That was cool to see. Benny is finally riding to his potential and I thought honestly did really damn well on the thing. He was riding so good. I’ve watched him ride for so many years that now I’m just like, dude, finally. Pull your head out of your ass. You could have been doing this for years. Just to see him finally riding actually to his potential was really cool. I was really happy for him, and even for the rest of the team. My mechanic, Taylor (Muto), I brought him on board to Beta. He was my guy for world supercross the year before. It was sad leaving. It really was a mutual thing. They kind of wanted to do a different direction, and so was I. That’s kind of the way it went.
I thought this was more like you were like, “Hey, I got to go.” But it really was kind of mutual, is what you’re saying?
Surprisingly, yeah. A lot of people kind of take that for what it is and they just see what they see on Instagram nowadays. That’s the world we live in. There was a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes, and things that we could obviously go into but we won’t. It was just kind of weird deal. We both walked away just saying, I wish you the best moving forward, and that was that. No animosity on both sides. It just didn’t work. Sometimes you try things and it just doesn’t line up with what you thought it was going to be and vice versa. It is what it is.
You were injured at the time probably when a lot of that development or figuring things out was taking place.
It’s just weird the way those things work. Obviously I trained with Wil (Hahn), and he would tell you the same thing. He just got onto a factory Kawi that RV just went and dominated on and he was just like, “Whoa. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be.” If you go a certain direction with a bike and a team and another guy hops on it, it doesn’t suit sometimes. It took me a long time to adjust to the Honda, and Chase (Sexton) was winning on the damn thing. Obviously the Lawrence brothers win on it every single weekend. It just took me a while. Then at the end, I finally started to actually feel really comfy on the thing. This bike is awesome. But it did take time. Unfortunately I was a little injured and beat up, but like I said, that’s not to take anything away from Benny or the rest of the team or anything. He did an awesome job. He really did.
If you had come in healthy at the start, would things have been different? Was it just too much? Would things have been different?
Yes and no. We were thrown a few curveballs right before A1, to defend myself and Benny a little bit. Just some things with the bike and things that we didn’t really foresee coming. So for Benny to even show up at the beginning, I don't think people really understood what was thrown at him at the beginning of the series. So, honestly for him to bounce back and to just kind of keep sticking with it and keep building, keep building, keep building, it was cool to see from my end because that’s all I want to do. Just keep kind of building and learn this thing as we go. I thought he did a really good job of it.
It’s tough to say [if coming into the season healthy would have helped]. I would have loved to say yes. For sure, not getting injured would have helped a lot, and just getting to race and do all that. But we still would have been faced with some problems. There’s no doubt about it. Not necessarily anyone’s fault. It was just the cards that I think we were dealt.
To mutually part ways with your team in July and end up on Twisted Tea Suzuki, who didn’t have any injuries and they found a spot for you, it’s pretty good timing and fortune. Like you said, you and Dustin Pipes and Aaron, you guys made this work. So, nice landing spot for you.
Huge. They’re really good people. I’ve known Aaron and Dustin from when (Justin) Bogle was there. Just good dudes. Ironically enough, just being around them the little bit that I did, I didn’t know them really well, but they were just super nice people. People that I thought I could work and be around. Larry Brooks being there was a huge selling point, and obviously being teammates with Ken (Roczen) is pretty damn cool. The whole thing just felt like it was going to work, and then I finally got to ride the bike and I was pumped. The whole thing just came together at the right time. I get to go race. I look at this whole thing as just a big bonus. I get to kind of shake down this bike quite a few times before we go racing in 2025 and hopefully get an opportunity to go race world supercross, if that’s a thing moving forward, and SMX and all that stuff. So, I was excited. I was just blown away that they were able to make this happen and wanted me there bad enough. I thought that was really cool. It’s always a cool feeling to be wanted. It was nice. I’m really glad it worked. It was just a cool deal.
Starting at Unadilla for these guys, right? That’s the plan?
Yeah. We were trying to make Washougal just to do it. Because then there’s a big break and we can kind of see where we are. But today was my fifth or sixth day on the bike, so it’s still early. So that might have been pushing it a little much trying to do Washougal. Not necessarily going to rule it out, but more than likely it will be ‘Dilla, try to move forward there.
Expectations? Where do you see yourself at Unadilla?
Tough to say. I honestly don’t know. I know how I feel. Just getting to ride consecutively for the past week or so has been really fun and a nice little change here. I’ve been off the bike for a little while. For me, just trying to stack some data and wherever that puts me. I literally am just going to go in with zero expectation. I have no idea what that means, but I know where I want to be. I want to try and get back and be a top-ten, single-digit guy and move forward. But I’ve only raced one outdoors before, that was Washougal last year, on a 450. So we got to kind of keep the expectation a little low and just see where we are.
