The top five riders from the MotoAmerica KTM RC390 Cup are full of excitement and anticipation as they prepare for the KTM RC390 Cup World Final this coming weekend at Silverstone Circuit, in England.
Anthony Mazziotto III, Gage McAllister, Justin McWilliams, Braeden Ortt and Hayden Schultz will get two 20-minute practice sessions on Friday, October 2 to learn the historic 3.6-mile Silverstone Circuit before having a 20-minute qualifying session Saturday, October 3 ahead of a pair of races, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, October 4.
But first, the riders and their mechanics and helpers are having to convert brand new RC390 Cup racebikes on loan from KTM UK into replicas of the bikes they raced all season with MotoAmerica.
Roadracingworld.com caught up with each rider Thursday afternoon in the paddock at Silverstone to ask how they were feeling heading into the weekend.
Mazziotto: “The trip’s been amazing. Hanging out with my American friends has been a good time. We had some fun today walking around and seeing a couple of things. Now it’s time to get down to racing.”
McAllister: “I’m pretty excited. I came in not really knowing what to expect, so I’m just having an open mindset and working on trying to get our bikes ready to get going on the actual race weekend side of things. We’ll go from there, but I’m really excited to get out on track, I know that for sure. I’m not too worried about learning the track. I just hope the weather holds up and these [Metzeler] tires that I haven’t ridden are worthy of the speed we were riding on the Dunlops.”
McWilliams: “It’s been quite an adventure for me because I just got back from Paris. I figured, hey, I’m going to be over here and I haven’t been there before. So I’ve been enjoying my stay out of the country. I wanted to get a little bit of time to relax and get my mind off this and then come back into it and be completely wiped and ready and accustom to the time [change], too, because we’re six hours ahead of where I’m from.
“Right now it’s just a lot of work to get prepared with the bike and then get out there Friday it’s going to be fun. This is a Formula One track, and it’s wide and fast. It’s going to be wide open almost all the way around here, except for maybe the hairpins. I’m just going to get out there and see what happens. I’m excited, very excited.”
Ortt: “It seems like a very professional set-up, which should make for some really good racing. Here, it’s a little bit different from the US because right now it’s the best of the best. It’s the top five from all over the place, all over Europe, and Europeans are pretty intense about their racing. At this point it’s kind of tough to try to judge what to expect, but it looks like it’s going to make for some really good racing.”
Schultz: “I’m just super excited to be here. Now that we’re at the track and getting bikes ready I’m really anxious to get out on track. I’m excited to see how we do. Free Practice One is going to be a good learning curve, learning the track, learning the tires, but I think we’re up to the task. I’ve got a bit of experience on a lot of different stuff, so I think that’s going to help me trying to adapt to the different situation. It’s going to be cool riding on a world-class level with different riders from all over. It’s the first time for most of us to do that. Getting that opportunity to compare ourselves to other countries is awesome. It was one of the things that I was really looking forward to. Overall, this weekend I think we just need to relax and have fun. I’m sure we’re going to have a good result.”
Most of the MotoAmerica KTM RC390 Cup racers brought the suspension, springs or complete forks and shocks, from their racebikes in America, and spent Thursday afternoon mounting those components. They also needed to apply special graphics to their bikes to identify them as part of the World Final, as the World Final will be a race within a race of the KTM British Junior Cup. The riders in the World Final and British Junior Cup will be scored separately.
Details are still being worked out, but all parties involved are working on a deal to stream the KTM World Final races live on the Internet. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.