Photo by: Hoppenworld
These “Privateer Showcase” presented by Race Tech Suspension at MotoXAddicts are interviews telling the stories of the guys in the trenches week in and week out just trying to chase their dream of racing in Monster Energy Supercross. While the riders at the front of the pack get the money, the T.V. time and the glory that goes with it, there’s a huge pack of kids just hoping to become regulars in the main events. We will talk to them and the guys on privateer teams looking to break through to that next level.
This week’s “Privateer Showcase” is a conversation with Munn Racing/Husqvarna’s Ben Lamay. Ben has been on the privateer grind basically since turning pro, but he has had a couple of short stints with some solid satellite teams and an on again, off again relationship with Rock River/Yamaha squad since late 2010. Over the last few years, the Rock River/Yamaha team has grown, and this year, they brought Ben on board as their sole 450SX rider with a full supercross and motocross ride for 2015. For Ben, a privateer who had struggled finding solid support throughout his career, it had to feel good to put the privateer worries behind him and focus solely on racing, but as we have learned in the supercross and motocross pits over the years, contracts do not always equate to job security.
After starting the 2015 Monster Energy Supercross, an FIM World Championship series, by missing the first two 450SX main events, Ben made the main events at rounds three and five, but for the Rock River team that was obviously not the result they were hoping for. That was made obvious when, the week after Ben made his second main event of the year at the Anaheim 3 Supercross, he got a call from his team saying he was being let go in favor of Josh Hill—who was doing his own privateer deal on a Yamaha. With that, Josh Hill arrived at the 2015 San Diego SX under the Rock River tent, while Ben took the week off before returning to racing at the Dallas SX on a borrowed bike.
After the Dallas SX and while contemplating quitting all together, Ben let the fans know his situation on the moto-forum VitalMX with a thread titled “Lamay Future”. Surprisingly, those six sentences typed on VitalMX led to Ben picking up a ride with Munn Racing/Husqvarna for the remainder of the season, and on top of that, there were VitalMX members that offered up money for entries and other necessities for #42’s Supercross season. It was a fun thread to follow and was made real when Ben showed up at the Daytona SX on his new Husqvarna, wrapped in VitalMX livery, and put his new ride in the main event.
After Daytona, I gave Ben a call to talk about his new deal with Munn Racing, how it all came about on VitalMX and also to touch on his early termination over at Rock River/Yamaha. You can hear what Ben had to say about it all in our “Privateer Showcase” below.
Hey Ben, you made the main and got seventeenth at Daytona on the new Munn Racing/Husky. How’d you feel out there? New bike, new team.
Daytona went pretty well. I’ve only been on the bike for about a week now, on the new Husky. I haven’t had a whole lot of seat time on it. We’re still working on getting some parts and getting the motor a little more competitive. For what we were working with, it went pretty well. I rode pretty decent in practice, the heat races and qualifiers—I did okay. I made some mistakes here and there but for first round on the bike, I thought it wasn’t too bad.
Did it surprise you that you made the main on your new Husqvarna on the first try? I mean, it is a big change from the Yamaha.
No, I didn’t surprise myself at all. I knew I would be there, but that track can go any way. You can do really good or you can do really bad, and you can make mistakes really easily and get hurt. So I was excited to leave there on a positive note, keep safe and keep progressing.
How hard is it to get used to the new bike? I know the new Husqvarna is pretty much a KTM at this point, but that’s a big change for you. Have you ever raced a KTM or anything other than a Japanese bike?
No. I’ve been on Yamaha since 2007, so it’s been a long time to really jump on something else. I thought it was going to be a pretty big change when I first rode it, but after riding, it wasn’t really that much to get used to. I mean there was stuff here and there, and I felt like it was lighter and skinnier feeling. I can throw the bike around a little bit easier than I could the Yamaha. The engine is a little on the weak side, definitely from a stock perspective, but the way the whole bike feels and the frame and everything, I liked it.
Nice, and with Husky, they only have Jason Anderson, so they should be pumped to have another main event guy. Are you getting any kind of factory support?
Not too sure on the whole program, but I do know that company is involved with the factory. They’re really excited that I’m out there. They’re excited that I’m going to be in the main. They are really pumped that I’m out there. I’m not sure how much support we’re getting from them and what they’re doing for Munn Racing. I know Chip Munn is doing a lot of work for me and getting everything together, so that’s really, really awesome. I know Husky is helping out that program.
I don’t know how much you want to go into it, or even if you can talk about it, but you started the year with Rock River/Yamaha on a supercross and motocross deal. As everyone knows now, they sent you packing. How did that come about? Did you get a phone call? When exactly did you hear, that you were cut loose?
After round two, I didn’t make the first two mains, and then they called and said we need you to get it together and get in the main like you should. I knew that for myself I was expecting a lot more out of myself. I made the main the following weekend and I got a 15th at one of the Anaheims, and then I think at the next Anaheim round, I made the main again and got like 19th or something. Then after that, I rode pretty good in the semi. That’s when I was like second or third in the semi, and I felt like it went pretty good in practice. The whole day went pretty smooth. Then the day after—Tuesday after Anaheim 3—they just called and said we were expecting you to be in the top 10 and in the mains every weekend, not riding to make the main and you’re not doing what we thought. We thought Josh Hill would be a better rider on the bike to represent our sponsors, so we’re going to have take Josh over you. I was really, really shocked. I didn’t really see that coming because the relationship we’ve had. My results weren’t amazing, but they were decent. But it was a phone call a couple days after Anaheim 3.
Right away they told you they were taking Josh Hill over you? Ouch.
Yeah. They had already made the deal. It wasn’t like they were thinking about it. They’d already made the deal. They were talking to him at Anaheim before anything had happened. They’d already made the deal, and they pretty much called to kick me to the curb.
Had you heard they were talking to Josh at all before that day? Did anybody tell you this or was it a complete surprise?
It was a complete surprise. I had no idea. Nobody had mentioned anything. They didn’t say anything, so it was pretty much a shocker.
I’ve talked to people that are close to you about the situation and I’m told—as far as you knew—there was no performance clause in this contract.
There was no performance clause in it, which was even more shocking to me when they decided to do that. I’ve been with them since 2011 and a little bit at the end of 2010, so it’s been a long time going with them, and I feel like I helped get them some of the publicity that they did get. Alex Martin came on the team as 250 rider a few years ago and really helped out with that. I think that me and him really got the team where it is now, and then for them to just cut me loose after five rounds into the beginning of the year was pretty disappointing.
I also heard that they had told you that maybe you could come back and ride for Rock River for the outdoors. Is that true or did I hear wrong?
No, you’re right. I think most people know that I’m a better outdoor rider than indoor, so they wanted to leave that door open. If I wanted to come back for outdoors, they’d think about it or talk to me about it when that time comes. Because they know I’m probably going to get good results.
To your credit, rather than just call it a year and go out and bad-mouth people, you pretty much kept quiet. I know this because you wouldn’t let me interview you, but instead of going off, you went on VitalMX and addressed the fans through a forum thread that eventually led to you picking up a new sponsor to get to the races. Did somebody suggest you post on VitalMX or was that just like, “I’ve got nothing to do right now. Let me try this?”
I was obviously pretty upset with everyone on the team, the people that make the decisions, but I’m not going to bad-mouth anybody. It’s a business and things happen. Life goes on, and it is what it is. For Dallas, I borrowed a bike from a friend just to go out and prove to everyone that there’s no reason I shouldn’t be racing. Then after Dallas, I didn’t have anything because I had to give all my bike parts back to Rock River, so I was pretty much left with an empty garage. I figured that I was probably going to be done with supercross for sure this year, just because I didn’t have anything. I was really considering just quitting because I was so frustrated and upset and my results weren’t the best. I was pretty disappointed and mentally upset, and I was ready to just start a new chapter in my life. Then everyone started posting on Vital positive thoughts about me and racing and then the whole Munn Racing thing came up and I got a phone call from Munn.
I think you might have started a trend. Everyone is going to go on VitalMX now when they get fired. (laughs)
That’s pretty funny. I just went on there. It’s a popular forum, and I just wanted to go on there and see what was going on, and it turned out in my favor.
It had to feel good to see on a forum like that how many fans you did have. While you’re contemplating quitting, you look online and you have all this support.
Yeah. It was awesome. It’s hard when you get everything taken from you and still want to go to the gym, work out and wake up early, be strict on your diet and all that. It’s hard to stay motivated when you know you just got fired and think you got nothing. It’s pretty awesome to see people are still behind you.
So your bike now is decorated with Vital MX graphics too. Was that just kind of your way of saying thank you to them, or did they kick in on your program?
No, it was just to say thank you, because for the people that donated. There were some people that donated money to me to help with entry fees and gas money to go to the races, like getting to Daytona to get all my stuff out there, and it was a big help on getting there and all the logistics to that. We just wanted to run VitalMX big on the shrouds mainly for Daytona to get the word out. I’m not really sure what the plan is for the rest of the year with running VitalMX on the graphics.
One question I wanted to ask earlier, what do you attribute your struggles at the beginning of the year to? Was it just the depth of the field? Did you become injured? Or just bad starts?
My starts were really weak and just lack of aggression pretty much. I wasn’t injured. There was nothing wrong. The bike was good; everything was sweet. It was just pretty much my starts sucked and I didn’t have any aggression. For the depth of field and the high intensity, I just wasn’t matching that for that right off the bat. It took me a couple races to find my intensity.
Your speed was actually surprisingly good, lap time wise, so it was kind of surprising you weren’t making the main because your speed seemed to be better than it had been in the past.
Yeah, speed was really good in the beginning. Qualifying, I was 16th, 15th, something like that in the qualifying, so that was really good. But like I said, just the intensity when the gate dropped, that’s when it mattered. Qualifying doesn’t mean anything; that’s just a gate pick. It’s just all about the intensity when that gate drops.
Do you think it’s harder to qualify for someone at your level since they put the semis back in, since so much emphasis is on start with the races being so short? Was it easier to get top 9 in a heat race and just get in?
You know, I think so. Like last weekend at Daytona, I got a 9th in the heat, and then the LCQ and the semi were pretty rough for me. Looking back at the beginning of the season, I’ve always been finishing right around there—9th, 10th or so—and I think it is. I’d rather have a little bit longer of a heat race, like a ten-lap heat race, and take the top nine. I think that would be a better program than to have less laps and more races. I guess they’re doing it for the fans.
I’m sure you have some long time sponsors that have stepped up and gotten on board with your new deal now with Munn. Who are those guys?
FLY Racing. They’ve been behind me with my gear. Bell Helmets, Eks Brand goggles, Rockwell Watches, FMF, DVS Shoes and Mind FX. Also, EVS—they’ve been behind me a long time now. Whenever I get an injury, they always step up and help out with whatever I need to be comfortable. They really have been behind me quite a bit. And LBeardsleycpa.com. He’s an old friend of mine. He lives in Texas and is a close friend, and he’s been behind me. He’s actually the only sticker that I ran at Dallas on my bike. That’s because he’s been a really good friend of mine and I wanted to give some credit to him.
Yeah, I talked to Chris over at Race-Tech Suspension, and right when this happened, he said they jumped right on it making sure you had some good suspension no matter where you landed after Rock River.
Yeah, I was with them for three years before—2011, ’12 and ’13, I think, I ran Race Tech. Just to go back to them now is pretty cool. They stepped up and got me a set of A-Kit suspension for the bike, and they’re really helping out a lot with the suspension and getting whatever I need for it. The suspension is really, really good right now. Just fine tune here and there, getting it better for the races. Yeah, they’re an awesome company to work with.
And you’re going to be with Munn Racing for the rest of Supercross for sure now?
Yep. I’ll be on the Husky with Munn Racing for the rest of Supercross, and I’m planning on staying on the program for the outdoors as well.
Alright, well, congrats on the new ride, and good luck the rest of the season.
Thank you.
