Photo by: Hoppenworld
During the 2015 Western Regional 250SX Championship, Star Racing/Yamaha’s Cooper Webb was an unstoppable force. After finishing 7th at the Anaheim 1 opener, Webb came out firing at round two with a win, and from there, nobody had an answer for the #17’s speed. From round two on Cooper won all but one main event and finished a close 2nd after a crash in the only main event he didn’t win. It was a dominant display by the North Carolina native that ended with his first Regional 250SX Championship, but a crash that resulted in a torn ligament in his foot during qualifying at the Las Vegas East/West 250SX Shootout derailed his chance at dethroning his teammate outdoors. Cooper tried riding through the injury at the opening round of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship at Hangtown, but after finishing 3rd in the opening moto of the year, he re-aggravated the injury in moto two.
After sitting out four races, Cooper returned to racing at Budds Creek. His first race back was a tough one—going 6-14 for 8th overall—but since then, he has gone 2-5-1-2-2-1 with three straight podium finishes and two straight overalls wins at Millville and last weekend in Washougal. With that, Cooper has firmly placed himself in the middle of the Championship fight between his Star Racing teammate Jeremy Martin and Red Bull/KTM’s Marvin Musquin. While Cooper is Jeremy’s teammate, he has made it clear to everyone that he is there to win races and friends are not made on the motocross track. They may have a Championship to win, but Cooper is not getting out of anyone’s way.
At Washougal last weekend Cooper and Musquin had a heated battle in moto one that led to words after the race. You can say anything you want about Cooper, but you can’t say he holds back his emotions or the words that go with them. After the race, we asked a more subdued Cooper Webb about his win at Washougal. You can hear what he had to say in his “Race Rewind” interview below.
Cooper, we know you love winning and we know you love racing. And, you’re very intense when you’re racing and it’s great to see that fire and passion. Go ahead and paint the picture for us and give us the overall of the day. After that, we’ll follow it up with the after moto one stuff. (laughs)
As a day, it was good. Practice didn’t go very good for me, but we made some bike changes. For me, I got a really good start in the first moto, which was nice. I was able to lead the majority of it, and then had a goggle issue, had to pull those and Marvin [Musquin] got around me. We got a good aggressive battle going. Just came up short. It was a tough one. In the second moto, we got another really good start behind Jeremy [Martin]. I ended up making the pass around him, led. Towards the end he made his way around me, and I just tried to stay right there with him. I knew he had some better lines, but it’s hard to be out front to switch up your lines like that. Next lap he made a mistake, and I was able to hold on and got a nice solid win.
After moto one we heard you on the podium saying, “I got something for him.” When you’re talking that kind of hard-edged talk, is it motivation more for yourself, or are you trying to get into your competition’s head? Or is it both?
I think it’s a little bit of both. I don’t mind or, I love aggressive racing. I love batting, but when it’s over a jump, that’s a little different. I was ticked off, and maybe it just runs in us North Carolinians, but I guess I just get fired up like [Damon] Bradshaw. I was definitely just a young, dumb kid running my mouth, but I did apologize and we talked about it.
We talked to Marvin a little bit ago and he said “this happened, but Coop was cool, he apologized after moto two and everything is good.
Yeah, I was definitely just a young dumb kid running my mouth, but I did apologize. We talked about it and it’s done.
Overall, you’re only three races back from your foot injury now. Obviously it’s feeling okay. Is there anything going on down there at all?
No, it’s 00 percent.
You catch a little flack sometimes for speaking your mind, but we all know it’s nothing that nobody else says. You just happen to say some of your stuff publicly. Does it bother you that you get grief for saying that stuff, when other people say that stuff behind closed doors?
For me, like I said, just growing up, and the way I’ve always been is, I like to tell it how it is. I’m here to race and do a job and win. I know a lot of other guys are a lot better at holding in their emotions and anger. Unfortunately for me, I always feel like I get beat in the worst ways. But it is what it is. It’s racing. Like I said, when we dedicate our life and everything we do around this sport and stuff like that happens, it is what it is. Whether you like it or not, I’d rather be real with myself and real with everybody else than holding it back and just being known as I guess a nice guy.
From your perspective over the the first three races, have you exceeded you expectations with your results?
For sure. I’ve been doing really good. I feel like I’ve been a competitor every race and have shown we can win races and overalls. I’ve been up there every race.
This is the first time that you’ve come back from injury mid-season in your entire career, correct?
Yeah. Luckily for me I’ve never gotten hurt. To come back, we really didn’t know. In my opinion I didn’t rush it, but a lot of the team and everybody thought I did. They actually originally wanted me to wait until Millville. But I knew what I had, and I knew racing fitness was going to come. I felt like racing is the best practice and there’s no substitution for that. Even with testing and everything like that, our practice bikes, you can only get them so good at practice tracks. You don’t get paid to practice; you get paid to race.
Were obviously off next weekend. What is your plan for the week off in terms of training and testing?
For me, probably maybe take Sunday and Monday off maybe and then go right back to riding and testing. Like I said, I’m still kind of getting back into it and obviously things are going really well. I feel like I need to work on a little speed and the bike a little bit. The bike’s unreal, but with the tracks coming up, it’s pretty important to have your bike dialed in. Just try to find that magic setting.
Alright, congrats on the day and thank you for talking with us.
Thank you.
