Interview: Hunter Lawrence – championship leader

We spoke to Hunter Lawrence about having the red plate after his Houston win and the journey to get there:

Hunter, championship leader after round one, you made it look fairly easy. You seemed to take a couple of laps to get your rhythm and then you were checking out basically…

I wouldn’t say it took a few laps to get my rhythm, jsut navigating the first lap or two. Everyone is pretty fast in the opening laps, just hit my marks. And yeah, looking at the same here, we will see, we have a little weather forecast, should be good though, we have a big old sand section, some dry dirt as of now, should be good, we will see what it brings.

How do you find the sand? There seems to be mixed opinions on it, last week it looked pretty tough and this week it looks pretty difficult as well.

Pfff, I don’t know, you either like it or you don’t, we will see, we don’t get to ride it today but we will see how it is tomorrow. If it’s wet it will be a little easier than if it’s dry I think, but who knows, we will see.

You battled Jett for the championship outoors, you are leading this championship, Jett is leading his championship, to come from GPs, I remember you racing at Valkenswaard when you were on Kawaskaki in EMX250, to come from where you have come and your family, it must be pretty amazing to be battling for titles and lead these two regions?

Absolutely, like you said, we have a come a long way, dad was working on the bikes in the driveway of this little shack that we rented, it’s cool, it’s very cool. From where we were to where we are now, the cold days of Lommel and Valkenswaard to now, it’s sunny, a nice time, it’s good.

450 wise, even Jett said you are probably better on a 450, are you looking to move up next year, get thise 250 titles this year and then move up?

Yeah we want to do our job this year, outdoors as well as supercross, but yeah, that would be the goal next year, kind of the same thing Jett and Chase have done, go 450 outdoors, jumping straight into a 17 round supercross series on a 450, it’s a big step. Definitely looking to do that transition.

No wildcard races on the 450 this year?

No I don’t think so, obviously both Jett and I are in championship contention, it;s Honda’s investment and they don’t want to do anything silly to risk it.

Interview: Jonathan McCready