Swedish talent, Alvin Ostlund has plenty of experience in the GP paddock coming up through the EMX pyramid system. He made it all the way to the MXGP World Championship and is currently with the JWR Honda team although this year the focus is just on ten rounds of the series.
Ostlund did travel to America to race two rounds of the AMA Nationals at Southwick and RedBud. The Swede did pretty good finishing 11-24-18-17 in the moto’s despite having to learn the tracks. We caught up with him to discuss his experience which you can read, watch or listen to below…
GateDrop: Lommel GP, known as the toughest GP in the calendar. I thought actually yesterday for Lommel standards wasn’t too rough, but they left it overnight and it got very very rough and bumpy today. Can you just talk me through your weekend?
Ostlund: Yeah, I had high hopes for the weekend. Didn’t start out so good in the time practice and with a bad lap time. The qualifying race was good, a good position in thirteenth, but it was the best feeling. For the first race I had a good start and was running in like twelfth or something in the first few minutes, then I got a bike problem. So yeah, the bike stopped and I had to DNF the race. Second race, bad start and I crashed early on and then yeah, I don’t know, didn’t ride the best. So yeah, it was a hard day, not like I was wanting.
GateDrop: Just on the level of MXGP this year at the front, I mean you’ve got Jeffrey, Jorge, Gajser and you’ve Roman Favre back now… stacked.
Ostlund: Yeah, I’m sure the top five let’s say, they are on another level. So I’m not really competing with those guys. I’m used to from 10 to 20 let’s say, that’s my group for the moment. But the guys are super fast.
GateDrop: Just on your season with JWR Honda, I think this is your second year with the team. What’s it like with the Swedish based team and your second year with the team?
Ostlund: Yeah, it’s easy with the guys. I know them for a long time and yeah, I’m happy to stay there for this year also. And yeah, even if we only do 10 GP’s this year it’s a good group of people.
GateDrop: You also had the experience of going to America, did two races in America. Just what was it like being in the American paddock?
Ostlund: Yeah, it was really, really nice experience. Everything is different. Yeah, like, I don’t know, maybe it’s a little bit more professional here in the paddock and everything, how it’s working. Things is more easy there. I still didn’t figure out how things was working, you know, when you pull out to the start and stuff… It’s a little bit crazy there. But it was really fun to have a new time schedule and new people to race. And yeah, I really enjoyed it with nice tracks and stuff. It was a fun trip.
GateDrop: Obviously the format is very different from MXGP. MXGP, you have a lot of bike time, you have two day format. You never rode those tracks before and you’ve only a couple of sessions and everyone’s pinned. So how did you find the format and trying to learn the tracks in such a quick time?
Ostlund: I was very lucky to do press day 20 minutes on Friday. So that helped me a lot because you need to go pretty much wide open from the second lap. They have two 15 minutes time practice directly. So it’s a lot more stressful there but at the same time, I prefer it. I think like that one day you are finished and like to have one more day in the week to make a huge difference.
GateDrop: What would you say is the biggest difference between the AMA Nationals and MXGP?
Ostlund: I mean, obviously the tracks are different. Like RedBud, you know, it’s rolling a lot more and you have so many passing opportunities everywhere. You can go like outside, inside. That’s a big difference. And for the competition, I don’t know, it’s a little bit stronger here for top 20, let’s say, compared to America. But it is the same there, you know, the top three in America are really fast also.
GateDrop: What’s your plans for the rest of the season? Will you do the rest of the GPs except for China?
Ostlund: No, only Uddevalla and Arnhem. I do the Italian championships on the side, so I have two Italian championships and that’s it.
GateDrop: Just on Sweden, obviously they’ll probably be sending a team to the Motocross of Nations. You’ll probably be hoping to be part of that at Matterley Basin as well, if you get selected…
Ostlund: Yeah, it would be awesome to race again at the Motocross des Nations. I haven’t heard anything, so yeah, we will see.
GateDrop: Do you think in the future you could maybe go and race in America again next year, or is that something you’d like to do?
Ostlund: Yeah, that would be really awesome. It’s maybe not the easiest to get a deal there, but yeah, it would be really cool.
