Exclusive: Michael Byrne Talks MXoN

Team Australia’s Motocross of Nations Coordinator, Michael Byrne, speaks candidly with Transmoto’s Jason Thomas about the performances of the countries that competed for glory at Ernée, France…  

Jason: Mate, you’re back from the Motocross of Nations, probably dealing with jet lag like I am. How’d it go overall? Let’s get into some details about your take on the weekend.
Michael: It was a pretty rough weekend as far as how everything went. I think it was a rough weekend for a lot of teams, actually. We had some good things happening but then we had crashes. It was definitely up and down, for sure.

Was Clout getting involved in first-turn pile-ups? Every time I would see Luke he was kind of at the back. One moto seemed alright but it just seemed like he kept getting caught up in issues.
Yeah, on Saturday in the Qualifier he didn’t get too bad of a start but then someone fell and took out his front end in the first turn. Then he was in that pile-up on Saturday. Someone kind of ran over him so his ribs were kind of bruised. His hand was really sore – his clutch hand. Sunday morning he couldn’t even ride practice so we were a little worried then. He just had to dig deep. We tried to do the best with what time we had. We taped it up and stuff. First moto didn’t go well for him at all. He got caught in a couple of crashes and then he stalled it a couple of times. We were a little bit worried that he’d even make the next moto, but his last moto was actually his best one. He came from maybe 18th or 19th and was as high up as 12th. I think he ended up finishing 13th. He definitely did a good job on the last moto for us.

Like you said, there was so much inconsistency amongst all the teams. Then the last moto, Dean Ferris – a GP winner at Ernée before – was right up in the mix. Did he have a fall there at some point? He obviously got shuffled back a bit but it seemed like he dropped way back at some point.
I think he started third maybe and then I think Romain Febvre and someone else got him. He stayed in fifth for a long time and then I think he said that the same dude that made the move on Romain in that section, he did that to Dean but they actually made contact. Dean fell and busted his radiator, which was fine because he only had maybe five or six laps to go. So he got off and I think he dropped back to maybe eighth or ninth at that point, which still would have gave us fourth Overall, I believe. Then because the radiator was busted he said that there was fluid and stuff all over his boots and the bike was super slick. And on the last lap in the first turn he lost control and couldn’t grip the bike and then he ended up high siding it and ended up finishing 14th or something like that instead of ninth. That bumped us back to seventh Overall. But there’s so many inconsistencies there – you can’t even afford that one bad moto. If you weren’t France or the USA, everyone had at least two bad motos.

Obviously for you having ridden that race multiple times, what do you attribute to the craziness and just weird results from that race? It seems like if you go to a GP or a National everyone’s pretty consistent and puts in two relatively good motos on average, but then you go to a race like the Motocross of Nations and you see so many crashes and DNFs. You just see very, very weird results compared to what guys typically do. Why is that, do you think?
I think the hardest part about that race is not very many people can achieve it on the day. The hardest part is to actually ride for your team and not for yourself. There are races where every weekend you’re out there battling and then there’s a lot of situations on that race where you might be battling a guy you don’t even need to battle with. He’s not even going to affect your score, but as a racer you don’t want anyone to beat you at all whether it’s going to matter or not. You try and take it to the limit every time and a pretty high percentage of the time at that race it doesn’t work out (laughs).

Whether it’s in the States or overseas, I’ve been quite a few times now and always noticed that. Guys that don’t typically crash or make mistakes seem to at the MXoN. I don’t know if it’s just so many quality guys from the US series and the GP series and guys coming from Australia that generally don’t race with everybody else, if it’s a lack of familiarity of what guys are going to do… I know with your crash in Italy in 2009, it just seems like (Davide) Guarneri did something there that you would have never anticipated, but maybe somebody who had ridden with him a lot maybe knew he was going to do something crazy like that. I don’t know if that’s part of it, but maybe.
No, that definitely comes into play. That’s why you need to be smart and choose your battles wisely. If it’s going to make a difference in the team’s result then you take the risk. If not, you just kind of try and be safe. Like I said, as a racer if you’re passing some guy, you’re racing a guy you’re not used to, you think he might hold his line but he might jump across on you and then that would be it. That definitely comes into it, too. I think that’s why there are just a lot of crashes. Not knowing who you’re racing against and how they race. If you race the US guys all the time, you know the guys to watch for and what not to. I think when you throw us all together in that situation, when you’re riding for your country, and everyone wants to do the best that they can, sometimes they don’t make the smartest decisions. They just don’t know the riders they’re riding around.

So seventh Overall for Australia wasn’t a bad result I would say. Honestly I was a little surprised when I looked at the sheet that it was that good, because when you looked at the results there was 12ths and 13ths. Clout had his bad results and then there was a 24th thrown in there somewhere. There were a lot of ups and downs. Obviously it could have been better if Ferris had stayed at the front, but what was the tone? How did everyone feel about seventh after the day was done? I know it was kind of a crazy day and guys were probably beat up and sore walking out of there.
I think the guys were surprised that they even had a seventh, like you said. There were so many people up and down coming into that last moto that we’d already had a 30-something and a 24th. When you have those sorts of results, you don’t usually expect to have a shot at getting in the top five. The guys were definitely a little bit bummed that we had fourth and it was right there. When you look at the results on paper, like you said, we only would have had one moto in the top ten I think if Dean would have stayed up. Normally those types of results don’t get you a seventh. So it just goes to show how difficult the track was and how technical it was, and how up and down it was.

I want to get your opinion because you’ve done and seen it all in the sport. Really the race came down to France and USA. That’s just kind of how it worked out. What did you think of that? Did you get to watch much of that? I know you’re kind of in your own world with the Australian guys and trying to keep up with them but did you get to see any of the battles that were going on with the Americans and the French guys? What was your takeaway from the first and second place teams?
I got to see a little bit of that last moto because Dean was running up front with those guys. You knew where every French guy was or anything that was happening on the track that involved a French rider because when the crowd was cheering, or you could hear an “ooh”. The atmosphere was pretty crazy. Definitely haven’t seen an atmosphere like that for a few years at the Motocross of Nations. They definitely put on a great event. I was surprised that it was really that close. The US guys put in a pretty good effort, really. The French were so dominant on Saturday, so I think they were pretty good to keep it so close on Sunday.