An in-demand Jeffrey Herlings caught up with Lisa Leyland in Argentina to look ahead to his heavily hyped MXGP debut with Honda in a field absolutely stacked with talent that makes this MXGP series the most exciting in years.
Watch the video here.
Jeffrey, before this first round were you just thinking, oh my goodness, everyone’s gonna want to talk to me, everyone’s gonna want to see the bike, everyone’s gonna want a piece of Jeffrey Herlings.
Yeah, exactly. My girlfriend just told me, it’s my 17th year racing the GP’s. I’m like, is it the 17th year? Wow, I’m really getting old right now. I’m quite excited because it’s the first time rocking up in new colors in Fox, in Honda, in Monster. So it’s a big change. So really definitely looking forward to it.
Jeffrey, 16 years with your previous team KTM, you’ve got the titles, all your titles with them. Why now? I mean, so many people would think, why don’t you just finish your career with KTM? What was the moment where you thought, do you know what? I need to change.
Obviously, you know, if I wanted to change, it had to be now, because after this, I’ll be really too old. You know, so I signed for two years with an option for a third. So, you know, if I didn’t do it now, I probably would have never done it. So this was the time to do so, and I felt like Honda HRC is a team I always wanted to go to, already in 2016 I was very close to signing with them.
So at that point, I didn’t, I choose KTM, and like I said, I had a blast with KTM, but at this point, I felt like, you know, racing for Honda HRC was a dream coming true. And, so far, zero regrets. I really enjoy it. I enjoyed my time with the team. It’s very, very professional team. And, at this point, even like sometimes I think I should have done earlier, but I never did it. So anyway, look back on a great time with KTM and now looking forward to a new chapter with Honda HRC.
I mean, a lot of changes for the team as well. They’ve got Patronus, they’ve got Monster as well.So it’s a pretty new, it’s pretty much a new chapter for everyone. And you’re all in it together.
Normally Honda HRC, the bike is always really clean and really red. I can’t believe when last time was that Honda wasn’t fully red. Now it’s even with Monster, Petronas, the blue rear fender, so it’s quite a big change. But by the way, I kind of like the design. In the beginning, I was like, I don’t know. But now, once I’ve seen quite a few more times I’ve been riding it, I’m like, oh, actually it’s quite sick. So still, you know, everything is new. And it’s still like I get used to the people too.
It’s different like working with Japanese compared to working with Austrians. It’s quite a big change. But still, everything is good so far. So now we need to go racing and the results eventually talk. So let’s try to do our best.
Jeffrey, something that’s not new for you is you’ve brought your training mechanic, haven’t you? Dave, over to the team. How important is it to have that familiar face in the team?
Yeah, definitely. I needed someone from the old team to come with me, like just to help me out and he knew what I liked on the KTM. So at the end of the day, there’s a brand new bike, but I needed someone I could fall back on and I really appreciate him coming with me. So that’s really nice from him
For the rest, besides him, everything is new. So there’s a few people I know, like, for example, the Kayaba Serger, he’s a long-term friend. I used to work with him back in the day with WP. So there’s some familiar faces, but mostly, like literally like 95% of the people or more, they’re like all brand new.
Preseason, Mantova, getting up to speed, weren’t you? And Lierop last weekend, your first win with Honda, how was that?
Yeah, definitely Mantova wasn’t as it was supposed to be. Like the first moto, I got a stone between my front sprocket and almost the DNF’d, then I found out what it was, so I could get the stone out. And then, yeah, I managed to finish that moto, second moto finished third. So it wasn’t great. Then, heading into Lierop, I knew I had to be a bit better. And there was a lot of good competition. Also, the world champion was there, Romain Febvre. So I managed to beat him in the second motor, go 2-1 for the overall. So at least already, after two races, I got my first win in.
But it’s all about MXGP. That’s what counts. So everyone will be here, like all the heavy hitters. I will be a very stacked field. I can’t remember if the field was ever that stacked as it is right now. You know, you’ve got so many manufacturers, so many good riders, so many world champions, so many GP wins. So it’s going to be very difficult to win. And I think a lot of people will be very pleased to see this racing because I think it’s a lot of good racing, especially with some new kids coming up like Andrea Adamo, Kay de Wolf, Tom Vialle returning from the US, and then all the guys we had already last year. So it’s going to be a stacked field.
