5 Minutes with Mitch Payton

A recently inductee to the Motorcycling Hall of Fame, Mitch Payton has become a legend and an icon in the sport of motocross. Starting off with a small shop that mostly did mods for Husqvarna motorcycles around 30 years ago, his company Pro Circuit has been heavy in the AMA racing scene for two decades. Since 1993, he has run Kawasaki’s official satellite Lites (formerly called 125cc, and now called 250cc outdoors) team. At Anaheim 1, the biggest AMA Supercross of the season, his team swept the podium — Hansen, Tickle and Rattray. While this is still rare, his team has done this quite a few times indoors and out in the last five years. Transmoto contributor, Eric Johnson, caught up with him after the race to get his take on sweeping another podium at Anaheim 1 last weekend, although his thoughts were preoccupied with the Kawasaki factory team changing away from using his Pro Circuit exhaust pipes before the season started.

Monster: Do you know how many times that is now that you’ve swept a box indoors/outdoors?
Mitch Payton: No, I think the first time was Pourcel, Villopoto and Gosselaar in Phoenix, maybe ’06 or ’07?

Yeah, before Pourcel got hurt. So that was the first time, really? 16 years in?
Well, we didn’t usually have three guys racing on one coast [before that].

Last year after the East/West Shootout in Las Vegas, you said you were worried one of your guys would knock another one down when they were running 1-2-3-4 in the main. Did you have similar concerns at Anaheim 1?
No, I was really happy. This meant a lot because a lot of our parts didn’t show up until the very last minute so my guys haven’t had time off since even before Christmas. We didn’t break our bikes in until Thursday.

Wow, your race bikes?
Yeah, and we didn’t have all of the parts. We still don’t even have all of the parts, but they [the team] worked really hard and they worked a lot of hours. They didn’t take a vacation, and I’m happy it worked out because there were times where I’m like, “We’ve not had stuff before and we just have to do what we can do.” I’m really proud of all of the guys for putting in all of the effort. They worked really hard to get this done. I’m proud of all of the riders; Broc [Tickle] and Hanny [Josh Hansen] and Tyla [Rattray]. Tyla wasn’t even going to ride the main because he crashed and hit his head and was throwing up. We got him checked out by Asterisk and they said that he could ride. Then he was feeling a little bit better so he decided to ride. So, I’m really proud of Tyla for doing that and it was really nice. I’m just really proud of my guys. There’s been a lot of stuff going on lately that’s been on my mind and they kept it all straight.

Distractions?
Yeah, just a little bit. And I’d also like to thank Hart & Huntington with Ivan Tedesco for holeshotting the main event, using our stuff. I’d like to thank Kevin Windham for running our stuff. Chad Reed… All of those guys who believe in us. All those guys believe in us and that’s awesome because sometimes people do things that aren’t right, so I really appreciate it.

Let’s go with Rattray. Was it the crash in that rhythm section in practice you were talking about when he hit his head?
Yeah, that was something the guys were starting to do. We had talked about it, then Hanny did it, and we were like, “Man, he needs to do it.” We put it on the pit board and he went for it and he was half-hearted when he tried it and it was way short. It was probably a bad call for the first race, for us to do that. We probably should have just taken a chill pill on that a little bit, but what do you do? It’s Supercross and every time you see somebody do something, you feel like you have to do it, too, so that’s what bit us with him. But I’m happy with everybody. Broc rode a great race, got great starts… Hanny was solid all night and then Tyla was a soldier and he busted his ass to do what he did. I’m proud of the riders and I’m more proud of the whole group. Probably more than any other year, they did an awful lot with getting everything late and not having everything and we put it together and we’re here.

That says a lot because I know that you’re very demanding. I mean, your mechanics and everybody work hard every year. Those guys are known to work long hours every week.
Well, they did. And then they look around and a couple of the big teams that we know of took off the whole holidays because they must have all had their stuff or whatever. I don’t know, but somehow they got their work done way earlier and they had time off. It bothers them a little bit, but we just didn’t have anything and we just had to keep pushing through it. How they did it was just amazing and I’m really, really proud of my guys.