Hymas on Foxborough Win, Gate Pick: “For the heat races, they don't open up the very inside and very outside gates”

After his great rides in Pro Motocross last summer, seeing Hymas earn a supercross win is not a surprise. However, when you consider his off-season knee surgery and his plan for this season was basically to get through supercross, learn, and come out swinging for Pro Motocross, it is impressive for him to score this win. Plus, he said after the race he wasn’t even sure if he would make it to the first East Division race this season (Tampa) as his goal was to get in at least half of the supercross season. He made it to Tampa, scored a couple of top ten results, including a career-best fourth at the Daytona SX. But now, he is officially in the record books as a winner.

“Yeah, I don't even really know where to start there,” Hymas said on his last 14 months. “First off, racing all last year with no ACL in my knee, really only doing eight races my rookie year. So, I had to do a lot of catch-up last year and then missing out on Motocross of Nations last year with my knee and the rest of them. Got that fixed. And the goal was just to possibly make Tampa, you know, and or come halfway through the series. So yeah, once we once we got to Tampa, it was just like, all right, let's learn each weekend and let's see what we can do. And clicked off my best finish of my career at Daytona with a fourth.”

“And I kind of went downhill for me after that,” he continued. “I think I was just getting too greedy with what I wanted. And having really only two weeks on the bike before Tampa didn't help at all, especially with the new bike this year, it's quite a bit different than last year's bike. So, on top of getting my personal health back to 100 percent, it's also I'm trying to develop a new bike. So, I had a good team behind me, and we worked our butts off to get where we're at right now. And hopefully this is just the start of a of a good trend going forward. But yeah, it's it means a lot to me. It means a lot to the people around me. I mean, they've seen me at my lowest, and there's a lot of hard work that goes in. And there's times that you don't feel like this is ever possible. And it's those are the days that you push the hardest. And you always have that belief that you can do it. Because times like this, it's I don't want to say they're rare, but it doesn't happen very often. So, you got to appreciate it a little bit more than usual, I would feel like.”

Hymas talked through the first few laps of the race.

“Yeah, I think from the start of qualifying, I think we all realized that we're going to roll everything,” he said. “And between qualifying and the racing, it didn't really seem like they touched some of the rhythms. So, I think if you could bust a double out here and there, if you could, it was sweet, and you could make a lot of time. But for me, I was just I was rolling everything. I want to say I changed the triples to the doubles. I was doing those, and I was like, my wheels are not leaving the ground. I was I was trying to be cool, calm and collected the whole time."

"But yeah, I mean, obviously they dozed some of the parts of the track and you could see that, but it was really just so you could cross the ruts, like once a lap went by, they’re back to normal," he continued. "And if you get stopped, I think you're getting stuck there. So, for one, I was trying to figure out who was in front of me. And two, I was just trying to keep my cool. I knew some mistakes were going to come up, and I felt like if I just kept riding my own race and didn't push more than I needed to. And I felt like I could just be solid. I could start clicking a couple guys off, and I took advantage of a couple mistakes. A few mistakes, actually. And that's where I got on the lead. And I was like, all right, I just need to put solid laps in. And if as long as I'm consistent, I mean, I should be good. And yeah, with the with the race only being eight minutes that was definitely, when you're winning, that's definitely sweet. But yeah, my mechanic was giving me a time on the board, and once he gave me, like, three minutes to go, I was like, shoot, like, we're getting pretty deep in lappers and there was bodies everywhere. So, I was just like, dude, just get this thing over with already. But yeah, it was it was a bit catastrophic because I was way outside on the start and halfway down the straight, I'm getting splattered, so I'm pulling tear offs. Hear the crowd go off. I honestly don't know what's going on inside of me. Yeah, seeing all that. And then I came around the corner in, like, fourth or fifth. I was like this isn't half bad!”