Photo by: Hoppenworld

At the final round of the 2015 Eastern Regional 250SX Supercross Championship in East Rutherford, all GEICO/Honda’s Justin Bogle could do was win and hope for a big mistake or bike problem from Red Bull/KTM’s Marvin Musquin, but that didn’t work out for him on Saturday. Instead, adding insult to injury, Justin had the lead early and was hunted down and passed by the Frenchman. After leading ten of the fifteen laps, the #25 put an exclamation point on his Championship by passing Justin and winning the final main event.

Coming into the 2015 Eastern Regional 250SX Championship, Justin Bogle had the red #1 plate and knew this would be his last year before he was forced to move up to the 450 in 2016. Unfortunately for Justin, Musquin was also entering his last year on 250’s and desperately wanted to finish it off with his first-ever 250SX Championship. Overall in 2015, Bogle had an awesome year with seven podiums and a win in the eight-round series, but his average finish of 2.3 was trumped in the end by former two-time MX2 World Champions incredible 1.2 average finish. With that, it was Marvin coming out on top and Justin surrendering his number one plate last weekend at the East Rutherford SX.

After he surrendered his #1 and congratulated Marvin on the win, we caught up with the Oklahoman in the pits to talk about his day in East Rutherford. You can hear what Justin had to say in my interview with him below.

Justin #1 got a great start in the main event, but the #25 is lurking close behind. Photo by: Hoppenworld
Justin #1 got a great start in the main event, but the #25 is lurking close behind. Photo by: Hoppenworld

I see you have a heck of a support group here. Is that family?

Yeah, that’s family. Family that doesn’t usually get to go to a lot of these. I’m glad they got to make it out to this one.

 

They’re all wearing your 2014 Championship shirts. It’s got to be a little tough tonight watching your title slip away.

Yeah, that doesn’t feel good, ever. There’s nothing that I hate more in this entire world than seeing someone celebrate on your behalf. So that doesn’t feel good by any means, but he was the better man this year. I just have to keep working. That’s all I can do. It’s on me.

 

Let’s talk about your race tonight a little bit. Good day? Did you like the track?

My day started off extremely rough. I had a couple really tough crashes in practices. It’s all part of it. That’s what we signed up for and it comes with it, so I got up, had an awesome heat race and got a great start in the main event. My GEICO/Honda is working awesome. It’s fast, very fast. Got a holeshot and felt really awesome for the first half of the race and then just started getting into lappers and started to tighten up a bit and should have made it happen. So it doesn’t feel good to get beat like that, ever.

 

Did you think a little in your mind like he might not come after you because he’s settled into the Championship, because early in the main, it looked like he might just let you go or that you had him covered.

Maybe a little. I’m just trying to focus on myself. Obviously he rode really well tonight. I mean, I felt pretty good. I felt like I had a possibility to win that thing. So, coulda, shoulda, woulda doesn’t matter. I’ll just get ready for outdoors now and go battle for that championship, try to bring something home.

The pass from East Rutherford that defined the season. Photo by: Hoppenworld
The pass from East Rutherford that defined the season. Photo by: Hoppenworld

What did you hurt out there in that crash in qualifying? You were on the ground for a while in the rhythm section after the crash. I was pumped to see you get up and ride away.

Yeah. I’ve been nursing a shoulder injury and my wrists aren’t that great too, so I’ve had those injured too. So a couple stingers and then just knocked the wind out of myself pretty hard, hit my chest pretty good. So rest up, I’ll be good.

 

While you were laying there, Jimmy Decotis went down hard in the same exact section, the same exact way. Or was his crash first?

He was first actually. I really like Jimmy. So we’re down looking at each other like, “Man, that is not what we’re supposed to be doing out here.”

 

Last year at the end of outdoors, you looked really good. With these injuries, do you take the Las Vegas East/West shootout off and do a little rest and recovery before outdoors?

It’s definitely a possibility, having a little injury and wanting to get ready for that outdoor championship like I said. It’s very important to me to come into that ready. So Vegas this year doesn’t really mean anything to anybody, so I’m not too concerned about it. I’d rather, like I said, be ready for outdoors.

 

You’ve obviously been doing outdoor testing lately. How are you feeling on the bike? How’s the setup?

Feeling good. It’s getting a lot better. We’re getting there. We’ve got some work to do, but we’ll get there.

 

Championship contender this year?

No doubt.

Author

Dan Lamb is a 12+ year journalist and the owner of MotoXAddicts.