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Jason Thomas
A pulp MX Network production. A cerebral and experienced look into the racing action from the week that was. This is Industry Seating with Jason Thomas. Presented by Pirelli Tires, GUTS Racing, Plum Creek Funding, Pro Blow Wash Works Connection, Bass Foundry, TL Speed Shop Concept Cod Design Co. Grandstone Boots and Fly Racing. Welcome to the Industry Seating podcast. My name is Jason Thomas and today we're going to take a look at what's been going on in the sport, what's upcoming. It's probably more exciting in the sport, what I've been up to and yeah, just catch up on, on things. It's, it's been a minute since I've done one of these and I'm sure everybody's starving for a little bit of content out there. Before we jump into it, let's thank the sponsors of this podcast. Pirelli Tires, Guts Racing, Concrete Funding Concept Coatings Design Co. Works Connection, Pro Glow Wash, TL Speed Shop, Grant Stone Boots and of course Fly Racing. Thank you to all of them for being a part of this and hopefully much more to talk about in 2025. But as for me, I've been all over the place. I was in Australia and that was a great trip. It's a long way down there though. That's, you know, everybody's like, how's Australia? Well, Australia is great, but you have to really want to go because it is just so challenging to get there. You know, you have to be ready for a 24 hour door to door type trip. You know, unless you live in LA or San Francisco, you can, you can certainly cut that down quite a bit to maybe 17 to 18 hour door to door, but it is just a brutal, it's a brutal trip there and back, but it is, it is worth it. The one thing I would say is if you're gonna go try to schedule or save up or do whatever you need to do to be able to stay for an extended period of time, you know, at least a week, if is what I would likely recommend. And I know that's hard, I know that's not possible for everybody, but you just feel like once you feel normal and are able to kind of get around and enjoy yourself, you're getting ready to come back and then you have this, you know, marathon journey home and then it takes a couple days to feel normal again when you get home. So that, that's what I would say. You know, if you can pull off like a two week trip to Australia, I think that's, that's kind of ideal or longer because you're going to be able to settle in and really get to spend some time there and truly enjoy, because it is. It is a fantastic place to be. And I said this, this was my third time going. I've said this many times in the past. If I was unable to live in the US or, you know, some hypothetical reason I didn't live here, Australia would be near the top of my places to live elsewhere because the culture is great. It's, you know, the language is the same, of course, accents and all those lingo is different, but the way of life is similar enough and easy enough that it would be an easy transition. You couple that with fantastic weather that they have. Most all of the civilization around is centered around the coast, so you have this kind of beach lifestyle all the time. And yeah, it's just a great place. So the racing was awesome. All that stuff was great. Go check it out. I'm sure they have clips and races of it up on YouTube by now, but if you ever get the chance to go down, go do that. So I got home from there on Sunday night over a week ago and was in the office for a few days. And then it was time to saddle up and get back to work. So for me, that meant some work for Feld Entertainment, getting ready for Monster Energy Supercross this year, and I am actually right now driving. I don't know if my directions are coming into the recording or not, so I apologize if that's the case. Hopefully not. But I'm driving back from Eli Tomac's house and ranch back to Durango Airport, which is Eli's preferred airport to fly back to Boise. But I've been here for the past day and a half, and I have to tell you, this is an incredible place. Beautiful. And I'm sure winter here is rough. And, you know, if growing up in Florida, for a guy like myself, the hard, cold winter is a little bit difficult to deal with. I'm sure it's enjoyable for the people around here, whether they're skiing or snowmobiling or doing all the winter sports things that people like around here. I'm sure they love that aspect. But right now, early November, it's bluebird, blue skies, as nice as it could possibly be. It is a little cold, not. Not terrible. Been a little chilly, but I mean, absolutely picturesque. It is hard. It's really hard to describe how beautiful it is here right now. So I get the job and I understand why John Tomac and Eli and that they don't want to leave, like, they want to stay here. Because, man, it is stunningly beautiful here. Went to Eli's track yesterday, Saw kind of where he spent all this time, where he grew up riding. He's got a really nice setup there. Tracks, outdoor tracks, supercross tracks, everything you would need to hunker down and prepare for a career or a season or what have you. He, he has it there and you can see where the success came from. Shot some stuff that you'll see on the NBC preseason show at Eli's house. And yeah, what a, what an amazing house and property that Eli has build for himself. And yeah, we were, we were talking about it, joking last night, our television, one of our guys on television side was talking about, man, this, this is, this is incredible. And I told him, yeah, all you have to do is be the best in the world at something and this, this can be yours. You know I was kidding, but it's so true. If you're, if you're truly the best in the world at anything, you're gonna have, you're gonna have opportunities and you're gonna get financial windfalls from it. And Eli Tomac is so deserving of the things that life has given him. And he has one of the nicest houses I've personally ever visited. It's not, you know, a 10,000 square foot over the top thing, but it tasteful. The architecture, the. His backyard, the setting, the land that he's on, the property, it is a plus, first class all the way. It is truly that nice. And I've seen some pretty nice things in my life. I've been very fortunate. None of them were mine, but I, I've been able to, to see that type of thing. And this was right up there. This was incredible. So kudos to Eli and Jessica. Thank you to them and John and Kathy for being so hospitable to our television team, taking the time to do interviews with us, which you're going to see all these throughout the season and on the NBC preseason show, which I believe is on December 29th. But yeah, it's over the top. Impressed with the life that they have built for themselves here in Colorado. So I will be headed back to Boise tonight and then immediately back out on Thursday to Florida. And I'm going to go through the same exact process with Hayden Deegan on Friday afternoon. So that'll be really interesting for me. If you, if you watch podiums, like, you can tell there's been tension, and I certainly don't want that, but I'm looking forward to kind of working through that and sitting down and talking with them both on and off camera about maybe they have perceptions of things that they think that I feel a certain way or said certain things. And, and I, I want to have transparency and clarity and all those things so the on camera stuff will take care of itself. That I'm not so worried about that because that'll be when, you know, the flip, the switch on, that'll all happen. But I'm very interested in the off camera stuff where we just, I just get to talk to Hayden and say, hey, like, I don't know if you don't like me, that that's okay. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I want to make crystal clear how I feel, what you think or why you think that and just have a real conversation where we're not at the track and we can just be adults and be, you know, man to man. Between myself and Brian Hayden, everybody gets to talk. So that'll be actually really cool. I'm looking forward to that. So we'll film that on Friday. That'll again be for season stuff, NBC's preseason show mostly, especially with Hayden because Eli, the main reason we had to film so much with Eli is he is not going to media days. So we had to do a bunch of stuff, social media things that they'll use throughout the season for specific races, specific events. It was kind of like an hour long interview with, with Eli because we had so much to cover. But I think Hayden will be much more centered around the preseason show. But that'll be, that'll be great. And then I head to Florida on Saturday for Feld, our Feld Summit, which is all week next week. So busy, busy for me. I know you guys mostly don't care, but some of it's relevant. You know, I'm getting to sit down with these guys. Jason Wigant did one with Jet Lawrence this week, I think on Monday, which was over Zoom because Jets flying all over the world right now. But yeah, we're, we're collecting all the things and, and we're, we're, the machine is getting ramped up for 2025, I guess is where I'm going with that. It feels like we're in the dead of the off season, but things are happening behind the scenes that are going to show up in 2025. So when you start to feel like, okay, we're, we're moving back towards the season again, like there's this slow period, we're kind of out of that. Riders are in boot camp, television crews are building all the, the Pre pro stuff and assets for 2025 starting to warm up again as we move, you know, ever so slightly move towards back towards Anaheim. Now for the Racers this weekend is Paris and Cooper Webb. Jet, Lawrence. Hunter. Lawrence, Dylan Ferrandis, who else? There's some other heavy hitters. Vial. I'm leaving some guys off, but there are legit guys going over to Paris this weekend and that'll be a, that'll be a great race to watch because I want to see where Cooper Webb is in his off season training development, getting back to, you know, where he wants to be as far as chasing that championship. I want to see kind of where Jet and Hunter are because they're, they're in off season mode. They're, they've got to kind of stay somewhat within a range. But none of these guys should be at A1 level in November. If they do, I would say they're, they're taking a risk of being too ready too early. So don't be fooled by what you see in November. That, that is a key metric always in the off season. You don't want to be way off like last year. For in, like at this race in Paris, Webb was so far off that I was very nervous about that. But at the same time I should have been talking to myself and saying November doesn't matter. Just remember, keep it in the right frame of mind that this is, they still have another seven weeks of training and off. You know, their, their boot camp stuff before A one and that that is a very, very important dynamic to always remember that they're not trying to be 100% ready in November by, by design. They're not trying to be ready in November. And you saw, we all saw Cooper Webb in January come out and almost win A one. You know, was keeping Jet honest, battling Jason Anderson, that was a far cry from what we saw in November. So we have to keep, always keep that in, in mind is these guys are not, they're purposely not 100 ready to go in these November races. But it's still going to be incredibly entertaining to watch two nights at racing, Saturday and Sunday. So tune in for that and see hopefully nobody gets hurt. That would be the, the worst case scenario. But let's just see. It'll certainly create some storylines, even if they're misguided. And you'll probably hear me say, yeah, let's, let's not, not take too much away from this. Somebody will, somebody will go off the deep end with some sort of take and I'll be talking them off. The ledge that would, that's my prediction. That will be followed up by the Melbourne Aus X Open which is at the end of the month. So that'll again feature Jet Hunter Webb, some other heavy hitters. Haven't seen the full lineup yet, but you'll have heavy hitters at that race too. They have a gigantic budget because it's primarily, I say primarily, it is heavily funded by the Australian Tourism department. So they help create a lot of money to get guys like Jet Hunter Webb, all these guys that are coming over. There's also the Perth World Supercross that is coming up as well. I'm sure many of you watched Vancouver. Perth will be the next race. I talked to Eli and John about that. And the brute brutality that is flying not only just to Australia, but flying all the way to Perth. Because for those of you who haven't ever been, you get to Sydney or Melbourne, you can fly into either one and that's a 15 hour plus flight, especially Melbourne from the US and then you got to get off that plane, change planes, do the customs thing and then fly to Perth, which is another few hours. It's basically like flying across the entire US that, that's a very similar way to look at it. If you've ever flown from say, you know, New York to la, it's very similar to that because the width of Australia is very similar to the width of the US So it is a long way to go. Now if you're talking about Roxanne or Tomac, they're getting upwards of 250 grand. I don't know the exact number but I know it's somewhere around that 200, 250 grand to, to go to this, these WSX races. So it's worth it. Nobody should be feeling sorry for them going to these races that, that's for sure. But it is, it is a brutal haul to get there and, and we were more laughing about, man, they're both like yeah, the races were cool but geez, could you make it a little bit closer to anywhere? Like it's about as far away on this planet as you can get from Colorado, so that'll be fun to watch. I expect Tomac will kind of lay waste to those guys similarly to how he did in Vancouver. I just think he's, he's firing on all cylinders right now and if he can maintain this momentum going into Anaheim, he is going to be, he's going to be a threat, he's going to be back in that championship fight. Doesn't mean he'll win it, but he's going to be back to the, the Eli Tomac of old. So we have some great races coming up, which I think is the most exciting part of an otherwise very calm and monotonous off season is we got Vancouver. I went down to Australia and watched. We're going to get Paris, we're going to get Melbourne, we're going to get Perth. That's. That's pretty good racing. And you're getting all the big names showing up. You're getting Tomac, you're getting Rocks, and you're getting both of the Warrens brothers twice. You're getting Cooper Webb twice. So we're going to have a great idea of where most of these guys stand. The only guy we're really not getting a taste of at all is Chase Sexton. And if you follow him on social media, you would know that he's hunkered down. He's in boot camp, which is typically in the Santa Barbara area for them with Levi Kitchen, and they use a guy named Peter Park. They're putting in work. I know what their training program entails. It's incredibly difficult. A lot of running, a lot of bicycling, a lot of versa climber and a lot of work. They use this rower like, it's called a skier G machine, which is like a rower, but it's. You're standing up and down, you pull down almost like a slalom skier would do. It is brutal, and I mean that with every sense of that word. It is a brutal workout. So there's no doubt about whether those guys are going to be in shape when they show up at Anaheim. One, the questions are, can they go fast enough? Do they get nervous? Do they get arm pump? Is the bike right? You know, especially for Sexton. But the fitness, I don't even doubt, you know, that's not really even a thing anymore. When you talk about the top guys, I don't ever question if these guys are really going to be in shape because everybody's, everybody's so locked in. Everybody works so hard at the top. Now the days of guys getting tired and you're like, well, that guy's not in shape. I, I don't, I don't really think that's a storyline anymore. In 2024 or 2025 especially, it's just kind of a, a thing in the past, which is good. It shows you the dedication and, yeah, the, the diligence of these riders to, to really work hard and spend time doing the thing. So short and sweet. Podcast this week. I'll do another one after Paris this coming week. So I just wanted to do something. I haven't, I haven't talked to you guys in a minute, but we'll get a Paris update after this weekend, and we'll certainly have a lot more to talk about. So thank you to everybody for, for being a part of of this and listening to these podcasts. Thank you to all the sponsors. Pirelli Guts Racing, Plum Creek Funding, Concept Coatings Design Company tl Speed Shop Works, Connection Pro Glow Wash, Grantstone Boots Fly Racing. Thank you to all of them. And yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Probably Monday or Tuesday after Paris. See you.