No Ego, Just Tones Of Talent
You may think professional motocross racers are a jaded bunch
who take top-flight machinery for granted, but you won't catch a
whiff of that from Ben Townley. A 23-year-old Kiwi who is new to
the Honda Red Bull Racing team, Townley has won championships
on three continents. Yet his eyes still sparkle when he talks about
his first ride on a Honda motocross bike-and a stock one at that!
When I was still in New Zealand and I knew I was coming to ride
on the Honda Red Bull Racing team, I got a stock CRF450R and
did some riding on my farm. I wanted to try one before I arrived
here in America and got my racebike from the team.
"This was my first time on a Honda CRF, and I really enjoyed it-I
couldn't believe how good a stock bike could feel right out of the
crate from a dealership! I felt like I fit it well, and that's
something that's really important for me-I have to feel very
comfortable on a bike if I'm going to do well, and it felt right from
day one."
And that was just the beginning. After settling into life on the
Honda Red Bull Racing team, things only got better for Townley.
"The ergonomics between the CRF450R and CRF250R are pretty
similar, so that has also worked out real well. Now that I have my
racebikes, I've found that the size of my CRF250R also suits me
well. The ergonomics are so good it's made it easy for me to jell
with the bike, and I'm really happy with that.
On the track, Honda's CRF250R chassis is really good for
Supercross; it turns extremely well, and that makes life easier for
me. It also has an engine that's quite torquey, with a wide range
of power, and that makes it easy to ride. And the brakes on the
CRF250R are unreal! That was the very first thing I noticed about
the bike. I'm a big front-brake person, and I immediately noticed
the CRF250R has huge braking power in the front. As a whole
package the Honda CRF is an amazingly good bike for racing at
the pro level."
Townley began racing while quite young and soon conquered
everything in sight in his home country, New Zealand. So it was
time to broaden his horizons-at an astonishingly young age.
"As a kid, growing up I loved racing," he explained. "I was about
six years old when I started racing. As I got older I watched
Motocross and Supercross races on TV from America. It became
a dream of mine to race in America. full story on RedBull-USA
pic from hondaredriders.com