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FEATURE “WHAT A LOT OF PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT JASON IS THAT HE’LL RACE JUST AS HARD FOR 100 BUCKS AS HE WILL FOR 100,000 AND HE DOESN’T LIKE THE LIMELIGHT. HE COULDN’T CARE LESS IF HE HAS 10 FANS ON INSTAGRAM OR 700,000.”
and we’ll get along great. I have two sons, one in this industry who started on 60s and went all the way through and almost every Pro rider on the track has either lived or stayed at my house or rode at my house; so I’ve heard every excuse! Honesty is a big thing. The other is a request simply to gimme everything you’ve got: whether it’s on the practice track or the race track. When the gate drops until the chequered flag I don’t care if you fall twenty times but just don’t quit on me. I tell riders ‘nobody is perfect and you don’t need to be perfect all the time…but you need to be perfect when it’s time’. It’s about learning the personalities. I tell riders that they should feel most comfortable when they are underneath this tent at the races. I’ll love you just as much on your bad days as your good ones or I wouldn’t have hired you. I believe you have the talent and the ability and you’ll probably give up on yourself before I will. With that also comes a responsibility and you have to be really direct with a rider. It’s about learning what they can and cannot do. There is a template across the parking lot [at KTM] that has been very successful and I respect that a lot but the way they do things is different from the way I do it. I truly believe that you can put 80% of every rider in a box. It is the 20% that makes them different and what you need to understand and work around. At the end of the day we want to win races and be successful- How do you work out that 20%? Is it the personal touch or just being very astute at the track and training? A bit of all of it! It is no secret that I hate agents and I love parents. I want the rider to know that I don’t care if he’s thrown in gaol in the middle of the night; I’d hope I be one of his first phone calls because I know more about the riders and the staff here than their wives or girlfriends do and that’s because I don’t judge. <strong>No</strong>body is perfect but we spend a lot of time together – and I’m sure every team manager will say this – through that time you get to see that there is a moment in every rider, mechanic or truck driver’s life when things are not going so good. It might be a family issue or financial and having someone that is willing to help and willing to listen I believe is a help. I’m open with my past and I’ve made mistakes. You can ask me a question and I’ll answer it. I’m not proud of everything I’ve done but I’m also not ashamed so that I’ll hide it. So it’s about developing trust over time. Finding out what makes them tick and their interests outside of racing and sharing some of those with them. Part of the attraction of the job must be making that discovery, and you are making progress both in the way to work and results. <strong>On</strong> the flip side it must be hard when you can see things are not working or starting to slide. It must be hard to maintain that relationship or investment in the character… Usually you lose them when they’re young. I have Michael Mosiman and Jordan Bailey and they are two different types of personalities. And then Thomas [Covington] as well. I’ve had to have some hard conversations with Bailey because [any problem] was always someone else’s fault. He has the ability but when I first signed him and he went onto a supercross track he had some really big get-offs. He didn’t break anything but it probably set him back six-eight months. Even through Outdoors last year he struggled a lot. He had the capability but not the self-confidence and instead of looking in the mirror and saying ‘hey, it’s me…’ he wanted to point the finger everywhere else. About three months ago he really started ‘drinking the coolade’ and changed his whole mindset and he’s made more progress in the last three months than the year-and-half I had him before then. My Crew Chief, and I had an argument while we were in Florida because we knew the direction where Thomas would MEETING BOBBY HEWITT
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