250 US National champ, Dylan Ferrandis, is coming into his rookie 450 outdoor year confident and ready to show what he can do on a 450 in motocross.
“I feel good, I feel really good,” said Ferrandis in the pre-season media conference. “As I’ve said in the past, the transition to the 450 was really tough. It takes some time to get comfortable on the bike, but now I’ve had this time with the supercross season and the time we’ve had to work on the motocross season. So now I feel really good going into this season. I’m excited for Saturday to see where I’m at, but I feel pretty strong. For sure getting ready for motocross is easier, also because before supercross I had a small injury with my hand, so I lost four weeks of riding. We set up my bike pretty similar to the 250 I rode last year when I won my championship, and I felt pretty good when we rode Tuesday at Pala.”
In the past four years it was so hard every time,” admitted Ferrandis. “To fight for a supercross championship, it takes all your energy and everything. When the season is done, your body just needs a few days to relax, but you can’t relax because you have the outdoors coming. So these three weeks are great to recover a little bit. Basically we ride about eight months of supercross and only about four months of motocross. We don’t have much time to be testing and try stuff on the bike.”
On having more time between supercross and motocross this year Ferrandis said: “I think it improves the level of motocross here in the U.S.. It’s a good step for that, You can see the guys in MXGP, they spend so much time doing testing and the bikes race so good in motocross. For us, it’s hard. We ride such stiff suspension in supercross it’s hard when we get onto motocross, it takes time to really get back to this feeling. This season, it’s great to have this. We have a better bike setup and it’s improved the sport and the level.”
“The goal is always to win. I’m paid to do that and that’s what I want to do. If I can do it? I don’t know,” he continued. “I feel like I can ride out front and get wins or podiums, but I don’t know. With the amount of good riders we have on the 450, even getting a podium is good. It’s my first season on the 450 so I don’t really know. I feel like last season I had my best season outdoors on the 250, and I have a lot of experience from my GP seasons, so I can feel like I can win or podium on the 450, but I just don’t know. It’s hard to say right now. The amount of good riders on 450s is unbelievable.”
Image: Yamaha
