Few people in the MXGP paddock have worked as closely with British talent over the years as Justin Morris. From guiding riders through their youth careers to helping established names fine-tune their approach at world championship level, Morris has built a reputation as one of the most respected coaches in the sport. Having previously worked with Ben Watson during his younger days, the pair have reunited for the 2026 season, while Morris also continues to play a key role in the development of exciting prospects such as Billy Askew and Charlie Richmond.
In this in-depth interview, Morris opens up on Watson’s return to the UK scene, the intensity of the MXGP class, the battle for the British championship, and Askew’s progression as he targets a breakthrough EMX250 podium. He also discusses the importance of British riders racing in Europe, his excitement over the return of Foxhill to the MXGP calendar, and gives his thoughts on the captivating MXGP title fight involving Lucas Coenen and Jeffrey Herlings.
GateDrop: Justin, I know you’ve worked with Ben Watson back in his youth days, but you are back working with him for 2026. How did that all come about?
Morris: Well, it all started with Billy (Askew) obviously working together with him predominantly at the beginning. I’ve worked with Ben before so it kind of went hand in hand and we kicked it off in Spain and Sardinia when we got it going. Like I say I worked with Ben when he was a young lad on a big wheel, on a 150cc and then worked with him through his youth career. It was on and off really but then in 2017 I won the British Championship with him when he was at Hitachi KTM.
He obviously then went to a factory; Yamaha and he moved abroad so I didn’t get to see him much. Obviously now he’s back in the UK and we’ve remained pretty close all the time. We cycle together and we do lots of different things so it kind of works quite well. It’s going quite well already.
GateDrop: What’s Ben like now compared to when you worked with him back in the youth days?
Morris: He was a phenomenal talent back in the youth days winning pretty much most things on the 150cc Honda and the 85cc KTMs and it’s continued.
Obviously his MX2 career was fantastic with Yamaha and then going into MXGP, he was with Yamaha again then factory Kawasaki. He’s very professional, works extremely extremely hard, one of the fittest lads I’ve ever met on and off the bike so he’s a true professional.
GateDrop: MXGP is very deep this year, but he has showed glimpses of what he can do – Spain was really good. How would you reflect on his season so far?
Morris: Spain was fantastic and we had a really really good winter. Ben would openly admit he’s much more at home in the sand and always has been even as a kid. Sardinia was a great building block for the winter going into the first races. Hawkstone the first round the British Championship in sand then Spain as well so sand was predominant and it’s predominantly his favourite conditions. We continue to work a lot on the hard pack, still testing a lot with different suspension settings and things.
We all know the MXGP class is extremely extremely savage and you can be really riding well in 17th place. We’re not great at the starts and you’ve got to get out of the gate in the MXGP class to get great results. We’re just focusing on working really hard to get up there from the get-go and getting him in that pace straight off the bat. That is going to help for qualification and everything like that which then gives us a better gate pick etc. It’s still very much a work in process but yeah he’s doing great and I think there’s plenty more to come from him.
GateDrop: You obviously worked with Conrad Mewse in the past for a number of years and now Ben – both are going for the British title. How would you say they differ from each other?
Morris: They have raced each other for years and they were even teammates back in the day. They’re close and Conrad’s a phenomenal talent and it’s really really close racing at the British Championship. You’ve got Ben, Conrad and Oriol who is also proven to be extremely fast in the GP’s and in the British Championship. It’s going to be really really close all the way down to the wire I think because you know those three are really head and shoulders above the rest right now in that class. It’s going to be really really tight with the racing and I can’t really call it.
Conrad is a phenomenal talent and excels massively in England. You know, Ben’s got a lot of weight on his shoulders with racing the GP’s as well and we’re just wanting to stay fit, strong and we’ll see how it pans out.
Regarding how they differ from each other, they’re both professional, they’re both extremely fit and they’re both very fast. I think it will come down to a mental game and even at British Championship level the start is crucial. The championship is very much on at the minute I think it’s five points going into this weekend at Landrake, Who knows what will happen but all three of them are riding fantastic.
GateDrop: I would say it’s a big year for Billy Askew, so far this season he’s showed good pace. How would you reflect on his start to the season?
Morris: Again, we had a really good pre-season Spain and Sardinia. We had the new bike for the first round of the British Championship, and we had a few mechanical faults. We had to resort back to last year’s bike for the first round of the European Championship for Billy which he rode fantastic. The first race on Saturday he finished third. In the second race, you know what it’s like in the EMX class it’s pretty savage, it’s up and down. Apart from Garcia everyone is pretty much all over the show regarding results. We’re trying to get out of that realm of things where you have one good and then one bad race which we did do on the Sunday. He didn’t take the best of starts in the second race and probably rode too hard in the first couple of laps. He made a big mistake over the back and wrote the bike off massively.
He’s got fantastic speed, fantastic talent and since then we’ve had a few more European Championships where we’ve done similar things really. Sardinia was a good first race and a great start in the second race but then made a big mistake again which was a DNF in that one. It kind of put the pressure on a little bit that we wanted to get through and have two really good solid results. We went to Arco and we managed to do that even though Billy would openly admit that he wasn’t relaxed in the races because of the pressure of trying to finish both races. We just missed out on the podium there in Arco but we got two races done and since then we have been stringing two races together and training has been really good in the week as well.
We have done some more testing with the bike like gearing and suspension etc. He’s really showing great speed and coming off that last British Championship at Lyng he’s in a really good place right now. Obviously going into France next weekend he’s going into MX2 which I’m really looking forward for him because there’s no pressure regarding you expectations. There’s nothing really apart from just learning the MX2 way and I think he’ll find it very refreshing that it won’t be so cutthroat and hopefully we get a really positive outcome from that Grand Prix where he can ride relaxed and we can really see what he can do. The EMX is such a different way of racing and sometimes you just get caught in these battles and it’s kind of survival mode and sometimes get very defensive. I think in MX2 it’s very much more open and we’ll just hopefully have a really good weekend there and we just keep going from strength to strength. I’m really happy with his progression and I just really want to keep on that consistency of finishing two solid rides and seeing where we go from there.
GateDrop: It feels like he is knocking on the door for an EMX250 podium soon – what do you think he needs to get that podium?
Morris: Yes, I think just working on the starts and piecing those first two/three laps together and no crazy takeouts or anything like that. People do really go wild in EMX250 and I think he just needs to find his groove very quickly. It’s difficult with one race one day and then the next race the next day. Getting back in the groove of things especially when we only get two or three laps before the race but he’s learning. I definitely feel the speed is there for podiums and we’ve already shown that. We just need piece those two races together and I think we can do that.
GateDrop: What’s Billy like to work with? He seems very laidback and is learning a lot from Tommy too!
Morris: He is very relaxed and laidback. He’s very, very talented and he’s great to work with. When I started working with Billy, he was kind of like a closed book if you like. It’s taken a while to really build the trust in somebody, but we have a fantastic relationship on and off the bike. You know, we play golf together, we do so much together now and he’s got that full trust in in my judgment on and off the track. It’s not just on the bike stuff, it’s being able to help him learn setting up bikes, suspension and just being a professional rider. You know, myself working with him and obviously being a professional rider in the past, helping him on that path. It’s great working with him and he’s grown as an athlete and a rider. He’s maturing week in week out so really happy for him right now.
GateDrop: You’ve worked with Charlie Richmond for a number of years. He has such a smooth style – what’s his potential like and what’s he like to work with?
Morris: Charlie is a phenomenal talent. I’ve worked with him since he’s been on the 65cc and he is a fantastic talent on a bike. His skill level is second to none, potential wise I’d like to see him a lot more at more European races. I’d actually like to see a lot more British riders at European races because that’s where you learn that level and intensity.
He’s great and at the age of 17 I’d really like him to stamp his mark on that class. He did his first one at Arco and I’d like to see him carry on and do more and more. If I’m completely honest with you, I think that will really help him in the British Championship as well. I think he’s got plenty of potential to go onwards and upwards.
GateDrop: At Matterley Basin last year we were talking about where you’d like to see the British GP go and without hesitation you said Foxhill. How happy are you to see MXGP head back to Foxhill this year?
Morris: I am very happy indeed; Foxhill holds some amazing memories for me. Obviously, you know in my years of racing that’s where we had our GP’s so it’s going to be hopefully a fantastic GP. Foxhill and England is very susceptible for bad weather but I hope they don’t over prepare the track. Foxhill is very much about hard pack ground, I hope they don’t make it like the Teutschenthal of this generation now with stupid amounts of jumps and over preparing circuits where it makes it so deep and rutty.
If you look back in our days of racing in the late 90s, Foxhill was a very very intense circuit and very physical even though it doesn’t get massively rough it’s very physical and more mentally draining if I’m honest because of the high speed. But the potential for passing was massive and I think they need to keep it like that, open up the hills and use the hills a lot. I hope they don’t over prepare it and don’t make it too deep and too rutty. The history of the place is that it’s fast and hard pack, it’s chalk, it’s clay and I think they need to keep it to that that way of riding where the turns flow and they have to you use a lot of skills to find traction. It’d be great to see a really really good hard pack track.
GateDrop: We had a chat in Arco and I think I remember you saying Coenen will be hard to beat for the title this year – I don’t necessarily disagree but what did you make of Herlings ride at Arco?
Morris: Jeffrey is phenomenal, he’s just Jeffrey isn’t he? That ride in Arco was incredible, everything he does has always been incredible. But I still stand by it, it’s going to be a real tight battle until the end I think. The only thing I think that would see Coenan miss the title is the immaturity of the years being in that class. He’s very young but the talent and skill is second to none. Jeffrey has that experience so it’ll be interesting to see if he can find that control and that maturity to see the season. It’s going to be very close between the pair of them, I think.
It is quite bizarre because Jeffrey seems to be excelling on the harder conditions right now on the Honda and Coenen seems to be working very well on the softer sandier conditions. I know that Arco isn’t a favourite of his but France will be very interesting around a very tight circuit for a 450cc round there at Lacapelle. Again, coming down to the starts for those guys is crucial so I think it is going to be an amazing series as they go. I’m not going to call the winner of that championship, it could be any of them and Tim Gajser seems to be finding his way on the Yamaha as well.
It’ll be interesting to see after this long break, you see Jeffrey doing a lot of racing in this long break and it’ll be interesting to see if that has helped him throughout the rest of the season. I don’t know him personally but he’s still racing a lot, he’s come over and done some races in the UK and he’s doing them in France and whether he needs that time still to learn about the bike in in different conditions. It’s going to be interesting to see how the break changes the championship – if it does or it doesn’t.
GateDrop: The level in MXGP is insane this year, it’s great to watch, right?
Morris: It is amazing to watch. You can make an amazing start there and you can have some just fantastic results, but you can also be a top top rider and not make the best of starts. You know, the depth is incredible. I’m really enjoying watching MXGP and I hope Ben starts getting amazing starts (laughs).
