Chance Hymas was unable to race the inaugural season of the SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) Playoffs in 2023 due to an injury sustained during the AMA Pro Motocross Championship last year. So, Saturday's SMX in Charlotte was his first time dealing with the hybrid style tracks. Let’s just say with 13-20 moto scores it did not go as well as Chance would have liked. Now Chance has to try and figure it out for the next two weekends, all while getting ready to race the Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations (MXoN) in October. Steve Matthes caught up with the young Honda HRC Progressive rider after Charlotte to get his take and see what it will take to turn it around in Texas.
Okay, Chance Hymas not the result you wanted, what happened in moto two, I saw you riding around on the concrete really slow and then you jumped back in. What happened there?
Chance Hymas: Yeah, I dabbed my knee, tweaked my knee a little bit. Unfortunately, it just flared up pretty bad and I couldn’t put any weight on it. I just had to kind of eat my pride a little bit, and I had to finish the moto. Get as many points, if I even scored points, I don’t even know. Just a disappointing day overall. I’m not trying to be the dark cloud over it, it's just as simple as that, it was disappointing. Especially going from getting second at Ironman to getting 15th or whatever I got here [17th overall]. I need to be better personally, the team was great, bike was good. I need to be better and better prepared.
I don’t think you qualified that well either, right?
I qualified 13th.
So, from the start it was a bad day.
I was just behind the eight ball all weekend, just uncomfortable, the way the track is, the way the tracks are set up the bikes a little soft for supercross and a little stiff for outdoors, so the whole thing is uncomfortable. And you’ve gotta be willing to be uncomfortable when you want to be comfortable. So, it is just part of it and unfortunately my riding style is not really set up to be uncomfortable. I am a very comfortable rider and very proper and use quite a bit of technique but I feel like today I just needed to shut my head off and twist the grip.
I just had a rider tell me you have to send it and not care to do really well at one of these, so it adds up.
Yeah, exactly. I am a little bit of an over thinker too and I was trying to be too precise with everything. Where I just need to shut my head off and twist the grip and not really worry about it.
Does part of you worry about the Motocross of Nations coming up? Like in the back of your mind you are like, “I’ve got that coming up.”
Don’t get me wrong it's still in there, but SMX is my priority, I need to do the best I can. Obviously I need to stay healthy for these, that’s what I am getting paid to do. But obviously I want to go race Nations, that’s still a big bucket list thing for me to do. So I am not trying to go out of my comfort zone to do anything that is going to effect that, but I also want to win 500 grand so. These guys are already going above and beyond sending stuff for me to go to Europe, so I need to do my part and do the best that I can at these SMX rounds.
