Olly Stone: Heading to Hangtown
By Olly Stone on 18th May 16
Thank goodness supercross is over. In all my time here I never thought I would say that.
I love the supercross series and all the racing. But this season has been my hardest yet, emotionally and physically. With only a fourth place best finish early on in the season it wasn't what I expected and least of all did Mitch Payton.
At one point we were down to one rider on the East Coast and due to sponsorship obligations Mitch had to hire a fill in guy, which was Gannon Aldette.
Coming from a privateer, life straight into the team Pro Circuit was from the opposite ends of the scale.
On his first ride for us he managed to get on the podium and had some good results to finish out the championship. He even netted himself a better ride for the outdoors this summer on a Kawasaki team Mitch supports.
If you guys saw any pics from last weekend's final supercross race from Las Vegas you would of seen how muddy it was.
Who would of thought it would rain in Vegas! And it rained a lot. The track was completely under water at one point and made for a tough night on bike preparation.
We got through it with Joey taking his third win of the season - but no championship. Again since I have been at Pro Circuit we haven't won a championship. I'm beginning to wonder if it's me?
But as Hangtown is approaching Mitch benched Tyler for the summer and now I'm working full-time with Austin Forkner. It's kind of cool as our journey together started almost a year ago when he came out to test out the bike and negotiate a Pro deal with Kawasaki.
With him coming out to California after Vegas, he has been here a week now.
We finalised some suspension settings and tested a few motor parts to see what direction of race motor I was going to build him for Hangtown and, other than that, he has just been putting in some seriously long motos at the track. From what I can see he is definitely ready to go pro next weekend.
With the start of the outdoor season approaching, this week at the shop has been crazy. With the big clean up from the rain sodden Las Vegas race, testing, doing motos at the track and building a race bike, the days have been long this week.
And with the first race of the summer approaching quickly, it's almost time to load up and head to northern California.
I hope this summer turns out to be an exciting one.
