We caught up with the man behind the bikes of all three Australians that took home their first MXoN title, Lars Lindstrom. The US HRC Honda team manager was kind enough to give us ten minutes of his time during the Aussie celebrations to discuss the great racing, the performances of the Aussies and Tim Gajser as well as testing for the 2025 supercross season and, if Jett ever gets nervous!
Watch or read below:
It was a lot of effort to come here and I guess it was all worth it now! Australia with the win, you must be feeling amazing.
Yeah, a lot of effort, a lot of effort for the mechanics, you know, and the crew chiefs. And myself too, but you know, physically, for them to have to build extra race bikes out of basically nothing, you know, like just brand new bikes, because we’re still racing in the U.S. before we have to ship is a huge effort. And so just getting the parts and Honda being OK with that and working with Australia this whole year since last year when we got second.
I mean, they knew that they had this their time to try to win these things. And so we helped out as much as we could with that and made it happen. And yeah, so super, super heavy for everybody involved.
All the motorcycling Australia team and, you know, Lawrence’s, Kyle Webster, the whole thing. They, you know, Kyle rode one of our bikes and which wasn’t easy either. I mean, he spent he spent basically a month with the Lawrence’s, you know, hanging out in Florida after he won the championship in Australia and rode our 250. He’s a 450 guy now and then back down to a 250.
So, yeah, that first race, getting a great start and then even tipping over and still getting, you know, eleventh was what we needed. So, yeah, it was awesome to be a part of it for them.
When Jett moved to open and Hunter MXGP, I wasn’t sure that was the right call and also disappointed because I wanted to see Jett with those other legends! But ultimately it worked out. Hunter rode really well. Jett did a phenomenal ride in last one and Tim got him at the end, how was it for you watching those Honda’s go at it?!
Yeah, it’s great. You know, we kind of talked about having Jett be the the MXOpen guy, because really the MXOpen class, in my opinion, should be the tough class because you have to go back to back motos. MXGP, you know, gets a long break. So, you know, Jett doing that, I thought, worked out well and and then, you know, getting to race against Ruben. And we hung out with Ruben last year in Japan quite a bit. And he’s an awesome guy and and with Tim.
And so it was really cool getting to meet them after at des Nations last year and Japan after that and getting to know them even better. And then all the boys really became good friends there. And so coming back and seeing them here and racing them and team battling at the end there was really cool.
And, you know, we work really closely with the team in Europe. Which is probably a better relationship than we’ve ever had, I think, you know. And so when we come over here, they treat us absolutely fantastic.
And, you know, we actually had a lot of help this year, too from from Kris at Lexa MX and he brought his trailer here and helped us out and didn’t have to do that, but did it all and treated us like kings. And so, you know, huge thank you to to him and Anthony, who’s been helping out all weekend.
Yeah, Tim in that last race, when he passed Jett the last turn. Man, it was tense there for a second, too, because we, you know, we weren’t exactly sure the score and where, you know, because Febvre had gone down. So Plessinger got another spot. So between us and the US, it was closer for a second. But yeah, super exciting. Can’t wait to watch it on TV.
Tim was riding the 25 Honda all year, Hunter, on it immediately and it was a quick. Jett presume he is on a 25 today. How much data do you get from him doing here? Are you more on what Trey rode over there? How does that relationship work with bike development before Hunter and John?
Probably a decent combination of all of that. Tim’s bike is able to be whatever, you know, because it’s a works bike. So if they need to make big changes, they can. But right now, our bikes are more similar than they’ve ever been, you know. So we’re learning quite a bit. Maybe our suspension settings are a little bit different and they change through the weekend because the track is pretty different. But but it was pretty cool.
You know, we get a lot of attention because we get great starts in the US. And then today, Ruben and Tim, you know, crushed us on the starts. So obviously it’s a Honda thing. And maybe this twenty five Honda is even better at starts than the 24 was which was hard to believe. And yeah, so we’re up front all weekend in it. And it was really cool being able to do that with them. And, you know, having been part of this big team.
Were Jett and Hunter nervous going to the last one? I don’t know if Jett even gets nervous?
Yeah, Jett doesn’t. He doesn’t. If he is, it doesn’t really show very well. You know, he’s he’s always kind of, he was really confident before the first moto. And then, you know, even being able to save some energy, basically, for the last one. And then I mean, Hunter believes in himself more than pretty much anyone I’ve ever met. You know, maybe other than Chad Reed and he’s got similar, self belief, what you need to have as a as a pro to be a top pro. And so, no, they didn’t show anyway. I think they were just there and they knew they had to get the job done.
On the season, Jett again, amazing in supercross and at A1 and carried that through. He had dips here and there, mostly with the rain. Were you talking to him at that point to keep his calm, because he still has obviously the skills to get the winner. Was he nervous at that point in the championship or how was it?
In supercross, he was pretty nervous, I think more more nervous than he would have been in maybe since ’21 on the 250 when he won his first title in 250, but then again, I think when that whole thing happened with Anderson, when Anderson took out Hunter, I think that that made Jett just forget about his own race and championship and just want to just do better.
And so that that probably helped, you know? Like loosen him up and everything like that. But you know, I don’t really, they have such a great team of guys. We all work together with, you know, especially with Darren Lawrence, Johnny O’Mara, you know, Grant Hutchinson the crew chief and Christian his mechanic.
I mean, there’s so many people that have been in his corner for so long that I don’t need to try to go in and say anything, you know, like that it’s where I’ll work together. I have a hundred percent trust and belief in them. I mean, he’s an eight time champion now already quickly, right? I try to balance what I say and what I don’t say and how much input I give on certain things. And when it’s necessary, I do, then, when it’s not, I don’t.
Did you expect Jett to come back and win SMX straight away after that injury? I guess I thought it’d be good, but to just pretty much say, like, I’m back and I am the best. It was unbelievable. And then again, a final under pressure situation to final around and delivered again, how does he do that?
I wasn’t going to be surprised if he did that. Yeah, I don’t know if I expected it, but I wasn’t going to be surprised because he’s Jett Lawrence and he, that’s the kind of stuff he does. You know, he’s unbelievable.
But you know, I mean, the kind of passes he made on Tomac late in those races. I mean, I was surprised at Tomac and how good, while he was able to come back from his injury. So yeah, those were the exciting ones, you know, passing him at Charlotte and then and again in Vegas. So, it was super exciting. What an awesome pass.
Just on Hunter a great outdoor season. Chance Hymas, talk a bit about him. he really progressed this year. Unfortunately, with the injury that, you know, thar Unadilla crash was pretty scary as well. He seems a really nice kid. I think he’s working with the Lawrence’s as well. So that was a really good foundation for him. Has he progressed quicker than he thought this year or just what he thought you’d get out of him.I think we maybe expected him to be at this point, but you know, the steps would have been a little bit more of a pyramid, than it actually was, you know? He had some issues, obviously with his knee during supercross. And he had a couple of good races and a couple of bad ones, he figured out a little bit with his diet or quite a bit with his diet and then, outdoors, yeah, I was surprised. I didn’t expect him to be that strong, that quick, that fast, you know, in the season. So for him to get a podium right away, a couple of podiums and then win at RedBud was super surprising and made me excited for him for the future, that he could take such a big step.
I think he can be one of the top guys and, hopefully now, even though it was unfortunate that he missed this race and also that he had to have the surgery again. I’m also pretty excited and optimistic for him for the future. Now that he’ll be a hundred percent, not nursing an injured knee injury for the rest of his career.
Finally, just on the 2025 Honda, I don’t know how much break you guys get, but the 2025 Honda in supercross, there’s got a lot of momentum, so expectations are high, but is there a little bit of needing to do settings again and more testing?
Yeah, I mean, we definitely need to do more tests and we’ve done some preliminary testing with Trey Canard, in supercross. We need to do more, but the good thing is, you know, it’s different, it’s quite a bit different, but at the same time, it’s not so different that we, I think we’re just confident that that it’ll be a good supercross bike as well. The first test we did, it was pretty damn good immediately.
We were able to use a lot of the things we had last year on this new one. And I’m optimistic again, that it’ll be even better than it was last year.
Congratulations on the historic weekend.
Appreciate it.
