Interview: Austin Forkner

Austin Forkner made it two wins in a row after his Atlanta supercross win and is now just two points behind championship leader Zach Osborne, with his supercross confidence at an all-time high.

After an injury coming into the season Austin was not necessarily expected to be on winning pace straight away but he has found his groove quickly and appears back to his best.

Doug Turney caught up with Austin after the race to get his thoughts:

Two wins in a row, last weekend a standard supercross format, this week the triple main event format, do you have a preference?

This one definitely requires more consistency and I felt like I had that tonight even with some of the starts I didn’t get I was able to finish up front. I figured if I could get three top five, hopefully top three finishes in a row that it didn’t matter if I won or not, I was going to be on the podium for sure and I might even win. I went 4-2-3 and that won the overall, it as just about consistency. In a regular race all your focus is on one race in this you have to bring that focus to three different races and think about consistency. In the other mains you can do something risky because you have too because it’s one race, in this you can take a third it’s just about consistency.

In the third main, the guy in front of your may not be the guy you need to pass for the win, what is your strategy?

I knew the points coming into the final moto, there had to be somebody between me and Zach and I had to beat Jordon Smith. I didn’t get the greatest start and I was trying to figure out where everyone was, I saw Jordon and I saw Zach went down on the first lap so Zach was out of my mind because he was kind of buried, so I went after Jordon and he ended up going down and then I was like, ‘ I’m good,’ but then Zach got up behind me and my mechanic wrote on the board, ‘go now!’ So three maybe four laps to go I was pretty tired but the last couple of laps I just put it down and got the far rhythm, the three and table unto table, and that really helped me, that’s actually where I made the pass on the last lap, that was definitely the deal break for me.

Between the three mains what did you do physically?

There isn’t a lot of time between mains so I just went back and tried to get down some water and get some food and get as much energy as I could, relax and watch film, try to learn what you did wrong and back out. It’s pretty quick, there’s not a lot of time to think back, if you are pissed off you just carry it into the last moto. I was pissed off after I lost my rear brake ( in the second main) so that’s what I did.

Do you notice much difference between the West coast and east coast tracks?

There was tonight I have never ridden a track this rutted, Oakland last year was pretty gnarly but I don’t think it was this bad. It was tore up but I liked the ruts in the turns the tough think for me was the whoops with the ruts in them.