Steve Cox | June 16, 2019
Dean Ferris has conquered all there is to conquer in Australian motocross, so now he’s moving on and taking on America
Australia’s fastest motocrosser Dean Ferris is hoping to make it big in America.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT PALMER
Dean Ferris has been here before. In 2014, Ferris came to the U.S., fresh off of winning the Belgium G.P. in 2013, to race with the Red Bull KTM team, but he struggled in supercross before he left and went back to Europe. Ferris is a motocross specialist, and here in the U.S., supercross is considered by most king, so Ferris spent the last five years racing in Europe and home in Australia. In Australia, Ferris has been absolutely dominant in motocross, winning 14 overalls in a row before finally losing one the week before he returned to the U.S.
His path back to the USA has been unorthodox. After winning three outdoor titles for CDR Yamaha in Australia, he announced last August that he’d be vacating his seat on the team to head to the U.S., but the problem was that he didn’t have a ride yet. Getting one, as it turned out, proved to be a little harder than he thought. So, he scrounged what he could and got a fill-in ride for a few weeks with the Rinaldi Yamaha team in the G.P.s, then returned to Australia, put together a privateer KTM effort, went out and won a round of the Australian MX Nationals. Finally, a breakthrough. He got a call to come to the USA to fill in at the Monster Energy Yamaha team for injured Aaron Plessinger.
Now, he’s here, and he’d like to keep it that way. We caught up with the fast Aussie at the Pala round of the 2019 Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship and chatted about his winding path to his latest spot on the map.
Ferris got the call to be a fill-in rider on the Monster Energy Yamaha Factory Team and is trying to make the most of it.
You announced late last year your intentions of racing in the U.S. before you even had a ride here. Well, now you’re here.
I did call Yamaha in Australia, because that’s what I’d been riding all during the off-season, but their budgets were all maxed out, and I guess to throw a third guy on with the riders they already had, they just wanted to focus on their riders and not upset the whole program, which I understand. But I’ve got a relationship with a brand down there, Recover8, and RaceLine [Performance] was a part of Recover8, and they helped me build a bike and said, “Yeah, no problem, we’ll take the van there for you and take care of you.” So I ended up on a KTM for a couple of weeks, and I went to the [Australia] National, won the first day [Ferris swept the motos on day one], and the second day was a little bit average [Ferris was fourth overall]. It’s just that I needed some support, and I hadn’t heard about this over here, so I needed a bike because I knew it was time to go racing—it had been too long—and I was prepared as I could be for that race. It was also a backup plan, so if nothing came about here—because the timeline was getting pretty short—I had a backup plan to keep racing at least [in Australia].
Those two bikes are very different from one another, and to go out and win on a KTM after years on Yamahas, that seems from the outside to be almost bipolar, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it does. I was just doing what I needed to do to get some support. That’s what it was all about. You definitely can’t pick-and-choose.
But it might actually be a testament to you as a racer that you can jump from one to another like that and go out and win.
It’s definitely something I’ve been good at; adapting. But I’m thankful to those guys for supporting me, and they would’ve been happy to support me for the rest of the season, but they were also happy that I got a call to come to the USA.
So, no hard feelings or anything?
No, no! No, they were stoked for me. They were the first people I told, and they were so happy that I finally got something because it’s not about KTM and their race team, but about Recover8 and the support that those guys showed me.
Australian MX Champion Ferris thinks he has what it takes to be a top-five rider in the U.S.
What about being back in the GPs for a little while?
That was before all of that other stuff, but that was also a desperate call for some support. It was about four weeks where I could get a bike and do some racing and get some support because I was kind of on the bones of my ass and trying to pull things together. I was, like, pulling old tires out of the shed and stuff to make it happen and squealing out for a bottle of oil and that kind of thing, so a factory ride in the GPs was pretty appealing. It didn’t work out, but I’m still thankful that those guys took me on.
It seems like maybe it turned out to be harder than you thought to get a ride here because you announced you were coming here before you had a ride lined up. Was there any particular objection you ran into that was stopping you from finding a ride here in the U.S.?
No. I mean, everyone had kind of filled up—the teams—and everyone was focused on supercross. By the time I called, it was the end of motocross, and everyone was already looking forward to testing supercross and focusing on that. In all honesty, it’s more important here, for sure, and everyone was just focused on the riders they had. I said I just want to do outdoors, and I guess no one really wanted to do that before here. It’s kind of new, but if it works out this year, just doing motocross, I think if I do well, I’ll be a good fill-in rider or a good option for a team to have in case their riders don’t make it through supercross. I know that sounds like I’m a vulture, but really, it’s that I just want to do motocross, and I want to be here in America doing motocross. If there are positions, and people see the sense in it, I think it’s personally a pretty good idea.
It could work if a team’s willing. You could test during supercross season and be getting outdoor settings ready for the other guys on the team because most teams do minimal outdoor testing as opposed to supercross testing here.
That was my original plan. I feel like I could bring a lot of value to a team, doing testing while everyone else is focused on supercross, and kind of get the team in front of the 8-ball.
Ferris is trying to adapt to his new surroundings quickly.
Theoretically, that makes sense, at least. How have things been going for you here so far?
I struggled to get comfortable. I’ve been riding around at like 60% trying to get things together, but I’m just stoked to be here, and now we’ll just be working on getting me up to speed so that I can be where I feel like I can be. I felt like, in moto two [at Pala], we started to find our feet a little bit, but I just had a crash like 10 minutes in. I was running with a group just inside the top 10, and I had their pace, so that was cool, but I crashed.
So, what’s the real goal for this series? What would you be happy with? A couple podiums?
It sounds silly to say it now because I’m so far back, but I want to get a couple podiums and ultimately be top five or six in the championship. That would be really cool, and that’s what I’m striving for.
Proud to be a member of the Monster Energy Yamaha Team.
You’re a racer, for sure, so it’s not silly. Championship racers like you don’t line up just to fill out the field.
To be honest, I haven’t thought that much past where we’re at right now. Right now, I’m just trying to get comfortable and get up to speed, and then we can start setting more goals. We started out behind the 8-ball because of the short notice to come here and all of that, so right now it’s just about getting up to speed, and then we’ll see.CN
