Joey Savatgy put 50 points on the board at the opener. Photos by: Hoppenworld
The two most exciting AMA races of the year are the opening round of the Monster Energy Supercross and the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship. A huge part of that excitement is simply the unknown. Is the defending Champ going to pick up where he left off and reassert his will on the field? Is an occasional winner going to bring consistency and make a run at the crown? Or is somebody new going step up and demand to be counted? Those are just a few of the questions that give us butterflies while waiting for that first gate of the season to drop to the ground.
At the 2016 Hangtown National, the first gate of the year hit the ground and Monster Energy / Pro Circuit / Kawasaki’s Joey Savatgy took off running. After recording the fastest lap in morning qualifying, Joey parlayed his first gate pick into the holeshot in moto one, his first moto win and his first ever 1-1 day for the 250MX overall win. Joey had never won a single moto—he won 2014 Unadilla National with a 2-2—in the first three years of his career and only has four overall podiums on his career resume, but that all meant nothing on Saturday. He demanded to be counted.
After Joey’s surprise performance at Hangtown, I caught up with Joey in the Pro Circuit pits. You can read what the Georgia boy had to say about his perfect day below.
Joey, perfect day for you today, 1-1. It doesn’t get much better than that to start the season.
Yeah, it was a good day. It went about as good as it can go. I was the fastest qualifier, holeshotted the first moto and led that wire-to-wire. I came out in the second moto, we were second off the start and I followed [Jessy] Nelson for quite a while. I got close enough, made a move and tried to bring it home. Yeah, 1-1 on the day, fastest qualifier and I got the red plate. All in all, I think it was a pretty picture-perfect day.
Was it one of those days where your confidence kind of evolved around your successes as the day progressed? You seemed to just get better and better throughout.
Yeah, but I think the confidence has been there since Supercross. I think I made a statement in Supercross that I have the speed to win. It definitely helped when we went to Vegas and it was the East-West Shootout. We had timed qualifying in the day, and I was fastest out of East and West. I’ve been putting in the work, and it hasn’t been going my way for a lot of these past couple of years, but quitters never win. You gotta keep digging and keep moving forward. And you know, the man upstairs has a plan for me. I stuck to it the whole time, and here we are. I have the red plate, and we’ll try to keep the ball rolling.
In the second moto, you got a second chance there. You were stuck in that pileup and got shuffled way back. Were you like, “Ah man, here we go”? You had to be pumped when you saw the red flag.
Yeah, it was chaos. We had a good start and got a little bit shuffled, and then [Martin] Davalos made a mistake and got stuck in a rut and I plowed into him. Then [Christian] Craig got around me and I think one other person got around me. We would have had our work cut out for us, but the restart helped me out that time.
Yeah, it had to feel like a huge breath of fresh air coming out in second off the restart. “Ah, this is more like it.” (laughs)
Yeah, before the restart I was like, “I don’t know, this could hurt me or help me”, but we got another great start. We were up there from the beginning, so that restart did end up playing into my favor. Amazing day.
In that second moto, it seemed like you were content with Nelson’s pace for about the first fifteen minutes, but the blue bikes of Alex Martin and Aaron Plessinger were starting to make a charge from behind. It looked from the outside like you noticed that and went after Nelson.
Ah, yes and no. I knew they were coming, but the first half of the moto I was taking different lines than Jessy. I was trying to make something work so I didn’t have to follow him, but nothing was working. The gap was staying the same, staying the same, so finally I had to start taking his lines. When I did that, it forced me to be in his roost. I used some tear-offs, took some rocks to the chest, but we got it done. Once I got close enough, I was able to set up a pass and the rest was history. We were able to bring it home.
I was checking out lap times from moto two—I’m a nerdy stat guy—and your time sheet is impressive. You weren’t the fastest, but you stayed within a second of your fastest lap your entire race. Is that something you worked a lot on? [We’ve since learned it was a second and a half, but still impressive.]
Yeah, Jeannie [Carmichael] is hard on the stop watch, man. I’m surprised she doesn’t burn through more batteries than she has. We work hard during the week. We’ve been working hard since last year. Made that transition and since then everything started to click. I’ve really learned more about myself since I’ve been there than I have in a long time and what it takes to be here. I didn’t know I was that close on lap times the whole time, but that’s good. When I go to text Jeannie later, I’ll have done her proud and she won’t have too much to yell at me about. I mean, there’s always room to improve. I’ll fly to California tomorrow, and I’m staying at Mitch’s [Team manager Mitch Payton]. I’m sure we’ll watch the race and learn where I can be better and try to improve next weekend.
We now go to Glen Helen with the red background behind the #37. How do you like that place?
How do I like it on a Thursday afternoon when everyone’s out there at the stopwatch Nationals? (laughs)
(laughs) Okay, how do you like it on race day?
No, on race day it’s usually pretty good. They do a good job. It’s a long series, and it’s great to start the series like this, but in the same breath, there’s twenty-two more motos. We can’t get ahead of ourselves. We have to watch the race from today—I’ll watch it tomorrow when I get home—and study, learn, try to come out swinging next weekend and try to do the same thing.
Alright, congrats on your first perfect day, and we will see you next weekend.
Thanks.
