HEP Motorsports

This team is nearing a decade in age...  ...Holland - Ezernack - Pipes.
I was listening to the 2016 Re-Release of the Cliff White PulpMX interview.
Cliff mentioned George Holland in the interview.

I then found this written interview of George at RacerX:
https://racerxonline.com/2010/08/11/where-are-they-now-george-holland

I then went and "creeped" google maps to see if George was still farming almonds.
(read the RacerX interview linked above)

Looks like George is doing very well (see photo below), good success story after a racing career.

Cool old thread to read through. The team has really progressed well! 

Tallon Lafountaine… Have not heard that name in a long while. 

Crazy to see HEP go from a solid privateer team, to the Factory Suzuki effort and having a rider as high caliber as Roczen on their team in less than 10 years after their inception. Major props to everyone involved with that group. 

Based on my experience George Holland is no doubt a great guy.  Initially chatted with him a bit when he'd show up occasionally at a little mx night track in Madera called Little Oakie in the late 70's early 80's.  George would pull in with his factory box truck and RM and would be super personable to anyone who'd come by while also smoking all the locals on the track.  

Fast Forward to the early 90's and was then living in Dana Point and was having trouble with multiple shoulder dislocations and knew I had to have something done to it.  While recuperating from the most recent dislocation, went out to Perris to watch some friends race. At that time Goat Breker had his GFI races going on at Perris and when GB saw me in an arm sling (again) he asked me what was up and was I thinking about getting something done to it.  Let him know I didn't know what I was gonna do and didn't even know which ortho guys in the area were good with shoulders. GB told me I needed to talk to George as he had been seeing a surgeon in Orange county for his shoulder and Goat thought he'd been happy with the guy.  LoL...I told  GB that would be some welcome advice but I had no way of talking with George.  Surprisingly, GB told me that if I gave him my phone number , he'd have George give me a call. I did that and gave him my work number as this was before cell phones but figured I'd never hear anything back.  

I was shocked when George DID call me at work the following week and once again was super personable and down to earth and we talked for a while about shoulder crap and he suggested I see a Dr. Almquist in Orange.  That was great advice as I did have one visit  in with one ortho guy who told me what procedure he was planning on doing but then followed that up with the comment "after that , you need to stay away from the motocross stuff to avoid reinjuring it" . That of course gave a sour taste for that doc and knew i needed to see someone else. 

My visit with Dr. Almquist was much different. When I told him about the other doc visit, he asked me what procedure that doc had in mind and when I told him , he laughed and said "that's archaic , no wonder he told you to stay off the bike!"  Anyhow, Almquist did his thing and never had another issue with that shoulder.    

Thanks to two great guys (GB and GH) I still have a good shoulder to ride with. 

I wonder how or why JGR couldn’t manage to keep their team running but PMG/HEP has taken over their position with the exact same bike with (until just recently) the same amount of support from Suzuki and are able to bring on new sponsors, grow and continue to be successful with now even working directly with Suzuki on a new platform. 

My guess would be that with JGR really being a nascar team and the SX/MX team was Coy Gibbs side project in a way, when they wanted more money from suzuki ( cause they could'nt find a title sponsor ) and suzuki didn't give it to them they didn't want to fund it cause they didn't make any money with it like they did in nascar. Imo even if they kept going once Coy died it was inevitable that the plug was gonna get pulled on the SX/MX team.

I guess I’m wondering how they couldn’t find a title sponsor when PMG got Twisted Tea and then Progressive to get Kenny as title sponsors. Perhaps JGR were limited to who they could partner with or something as to not conflate with other sponsors they were tied to? Or I guess as you said perhaps it wasn’t a priority or worth the time and effort after Coy passed if no one else running the team were that invested in the effort. 

2026 'Zuk looking unreal in that original screenshot. 

Cool thread revival!

I don’t think a lot of guys wanted to go to JGR in the end also. Look at what HEP lets Kenny do to his bikes (basically whatever he wants) whereas I think JGR were making a lot of parts in house in their Nascar fab shop, but nothing really worked good? That initial backwards motor Yamaha screwed them with signing riders, and then they went to the Suzuki that everyone was thinking was a dinosaur. 

Would be cool to see Hep put a 250 team together.  May spark a interest from Suzuki to put a little r and d into their rmz250.. Not too many rmz 250 riders out there.

They’ve had 250 riders 

Never knew that. Always thought they were a 450 team.

I heard they’re starting up a legit amateur program again for Suzuki I’d think that and a new RMZ250 would spark them to start a 250 MX/SX team. I’m sure they have it in the pipeline to achieve within the next couple of years. Have to imagine Ken if interested after retiring, will become some type of brand ambassador for Suzuki or manager for HEP

Dillion Schwartz in sx in 2023, but then I think he went back to BarX for outdoors. 

Is it me or does Star occupy 40% of all 250 riders bikes? They have a lot of riders.