Jordon Smith on Star Yamaha Probably Being His Last Big Chance 2

There are a limited number of factory rides in the sport with a larger number of riders vying for said spots. More often than not when a rider goes from a factory ride to a privateer effort they don't get called back up. Jordon Smith who has had multiple factory supported rides took his spot at Firepower Honda in 2022 and rode well enough to get the call from Star Yamaha Racing for 2023. He talked to us about what that means and what he plans to do with it.

        For the full interview, check out the YouTube video right here. If you're interested in the condensed written version, scroll down just a bit further.

Jamie Guida - Vital MX: A year ago you talked about there being a bit of motivation in the fact that no factory level team really seem to show any interest in you for 2022. Now that you've moved to Star Yamaha Racing, do you feel vindicated?

Jordon Smith: I feel I definitely earned my spot back on this team, you know? And I understood why no teams were super interested before because I had had so many injuries. But I put my head down with Firepower Honda, Yarrive (Konsky), and the whole team. Martin (Davalos) and everyone there, they helped me showcase what I could do and that I could stay healthy for a full season. Once I got the call from Bobby (Reagan), I was excited and really motivated to take everything to the next level and to get training with all the guys. I think that's going to be one of the biggest things, having all the fast guys to ride with every day. Hopefully it's going to take me to the next level there.

Vital MX: Before you heard from Star and Bobby, was there an option to go back to Firepower? Were there other deals in the works? What was ‘23 looking like?

Jordon: I really hadn't had any other calls. It was pretty early when they talked to me. It was probably with two or three rounds left in supercross. I had been talking to Yarrive about signing another year or two with them and the whole World Supercross was being talked about. We weren’t 100% sure what it was going to be. So, we were planning on going and I was planning to race WSX with Firepower. Then I was going to race Australian supercross and get ready for supercross here. I was happy with how everything was going there with the resources that we had to work with. We were dealt a few bad cards going into the season, but we made the most of it and I was really happy with that. But it's hard to turn down a Star ride. I feel like this is definitely one of my last opportunities at this, so I have to make the most of it and keep getting those opportunities.

Vital MX: Your ‘22 season had you finishing sixth overall with a couple of top fives. What are your thoughts on the season?

Jordon: Yeah, it wasn’t bad. It’s been so long since I really got into the flow of a season. In 2020 I made it three or four rounds and tore my ACL and didn't race anymore that year. And then kind of the same situation in ‘21 with my shoulder. So going into ‘22 with Firepower, I had a lot of time on the bike, and I felt good at practice, I felt great at MTF. The bike felt good. I felt like I was going to be getting some podiums throughout the year. That didn't end up happening. I got a few top fives, but mainly I was around fifth to seventh for most of the year. And I struggled with starts a little bit. We also had a curveball in that we were working with Factory Connection suspension and our main suspension guy is from Canada. Long story short, he couldn't travel from Canada to the US because of some COVID stuff. We only tested two days before the season and that was in December. Ziggy came down and that was before we even had a full mod motor. We were still on basically a stock 250. Once you get that race bike, everything changes. And we were chasing stuff throughout the whole season. It's hard doing it across the phone and trying to send videos without our guy being there to watch. If some things had gone a little bit different, it would have been an even better season, in my opinion. I felt I would have some more runs up front, maybe not right there with Jett, but running in that three, four or five spot a little bit more. But it just didn't work out that way. Every week I just tried to take what I got and try to get better and better. I think I finished one point out of fifth and we had a bike issue at Atlanta after I broke my finger. We had a bike issue on the last lap of the LCQ. That was a bummer. But overall, it was a good season. 

Vital MX: You mentioned struggling with your starts. Do you feel that was not getting enough testing with engine issues or was it a bit of technique, or all of the above?

Jordon: I've always been a pretty good starter in my opinion. When I was on TLD, and on Geico too. I got a couple of holeshots, so I've always been a pretty good starter, especially since I switched to the grates. I was just struggling with the clutch, and we could never really figure out exactly what was causing it. I felt like the clutch was either there or not. It was in and then as you let out, it would jump, and I was wheelieing really bad. I couldn't keep the front wheel down. We played with a lot of different things and could just never get it dialed in to where I was comfortable on it. It was frustrating because in the years on TLD that I was battling for the championships and even on PC, I was always coming out in the top five. It makes it so much easier running from there instead of coming out, some weeks it felt like I was dead last around the first turn and it's just no fun. It makes it a lot tougher.

Vital MX: You mentioned Star Racing talking to you towards the end of the season and we heard the rumors for months now.  I'm sure you hear the, “He doesn't deserve that ride” 0r “What are they thinking?” comments. How do you respond to that, or do you respond to it?

Jordon: The best thing is to let the actions speak for themselves and go put in the work and be prepared to race and go out there and do the job that Star is hiring me for. At the end of the day, people will stop talking about that stuff. I think it was the same thing with Christian Craig. Whenever he signed with Star everyone was like, “oh, he doesn't deserve that” or “he's never going to win a championship”. But he put in the work, and I was fortunate enough to ride with Christian throughout the summer and watch how hard he was working. That's what it takes, a good program, a good team and a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of things to go right during the season, you know?

Vital MX: It’s so funny that in this sport, the fans are so critical. If you're not on the podium, even first and second, it's, “that guy sucks”. There's only one guy that's going to win the championship, and then they just sort of gloss over almost everybody else.

Jordon: Yeah, for sure, it's hard. I understand where the fans come from, too. I've talked to multiple people about this before. I've been to Moto GP races before and the teams and the riders and everyone working there, they were cheering on their guy that got eighth place, like he just won. It was a huge deal. And in our sport, like you said, if you're not winning, first, second, third, no one says, “okay, good, ride”. You may have a great ride, maybe a privateer guy that gets seventh and that's a great ride for him. But no one really says too much about it. It's tough sometimes because you know sitting on that line that if you're not top three or sometimes even like you said, top three is not good enough. 

Vital MX: You have to be very mentally strong. Speaking of that, Star Yamaha has proven their ability to win. The expectations are high on that team. How much does that affect what you expect out of yourself this year? Does it change?

Jordon: Not really. I've been on great teams my whole career. Every year I go into it wanting to win and I put in the work to try and win. And it's going to be no different this year. I would say this past year was the only year that I didn't go in thinking that I really have a shot at the championship. I felt like I was good enough to go win races. And that's how I always feel going to the races. If I start showing up to races and not feeling like I have a chance to win that night, then it might be time to hang it up.

Vital MX: Has there been any feeling of, “I have to do it now”? The chances will run out at some point. Do you feel that pressure?

Jordon: Yeah, I definitely feel that. I know that this is probably, if I don't make it work here, it's just probably my last big chance at this. But I don't necessarily feel that pressure and I don't feel like it's pressure. It's just motivating to make me work harder and put everything into it.

Vital MX: What do you like about the bike so far? We hear how great this bike is. I just talked to your teammate Stilez Robetrson a couple of days ago. He was just blown away by the motorcycle. How do you feel about it?

Jordon: Probably the same way he feels about it. It's unbelievable, the power that they're building is just crazy. They have so much data on the bike, and they just keep making it better and they keep working and working. Every day they're trying something new here, trying something new there.  I've been training with them for about four months now. I started at the beginning of June, and I rode all of the outdoor practice with those guys while they were racing, and I was just training with them. I rode the bike how it was for about a month. And then once I started feeling pretty comfortable and going faster, I talked to Drew and Jake, our suspension guys, and worked on a couple of settings, kind of personalized for me. They have this huge databank of settings that (Dylan) Ferrandis won outdoors on, settings that (Justin) Cooper won outdoors on, settings that Plessinger won outdoors on. They have all these settings that are proven settings, but they're all different as well. We worked off of those settings and dialed in a setting that was for me. You know coming to Star that that's not going to be an excuse, right? That the bike isn't good enough or something like that.

Vital MX: Star Racing has a lot of guys on their team. How do you get along with everybody? Have you had any run ins in the past with anybody or are we going to be good?

Jordon: No, I think we're all good. I mean, I'm the oldest, well, JCoop is, training with us and he's about a year or two younger than me, but everyone else, I feel like I'm ten years older than them. I haven't really raced a lot of them. It's been a really good vibe. We all train together with Swanie and we all ride together. We do gym bike rides, everything we do, we all do together. And it's got a good vibe to it. Everyone gets along good, so we just kind of help elevate each other and push each other, and I think it works out pretty well.