One could have forgiven Jesse James for giving up on his racing dreams. After all, writing off not one but two middleweight sportbikes in a period of a few months is a big hit for any racer’s budget, let alone a club racer whose main funding source is his own checkbook. But James tucked the hard-earned lessons away, took a little time off, regrouped and hit the track harder than ever. The effort was rewarded with a National title—James is the 2013 WERA National Challenge Series Open Superstock Novice Champion. “It’s a lot of work, and to know that the work has paid off—it feels incredible,” says James, 26, of Edwardsville, Illinois. That hard work has its roots in a bike that probably can best be described as cute—the Honda VTR250. That was James’ first bike, one that he purchased in 2008. “It had that 1980s paint scheme on it. It was my first bike, so I was pretty excited about it,” he says. James always had an interest in things that went fast. Like many, he had been bitten by the racing bug when he was very young. But it wasn’t until he was older that he learned that his racing dreams could become reality merely by substituting two wheels for four. “I’ve been into racing since I was a little kid. Since I was three years old, I wanted to climb into something with a steering wheel,” James says. “But bikes are a lot easier to get into racing than cars. If people just knew that, our sport would be so much bigger in America. I had a roommate in college who watched motorcycle racing, motocross, road racing, and I watched it there.” Watching turned into participating in 2009. James bought a Buell XB9R in July of 2009 and a month later did his first track day. The entire time, he was looking toward getting his racing license. He started out with the Midwest Cafe Racing Association, riding at Gateway Motorsports Park. By October, he had put in enough time on the track that he was ready to race with MCRA the following season. By this time, he’d sold the XB9R and picked up a Honda CBR600RR. But just days before his first race weekend, he wrecked the bike on the street. James spent two days without sleep thrashing to put the thing back into race-ready shape—and then finished third in the Amateur GT class at his first-ever road race. He followed that debut with a string of top-five finishes, including a second in the penultimate round, to take the MCRA Amateur GT Championship. His next season was a little tougher. James was racing with CCS at Blackhawk Farms Raceway in 2011 when he hit oil on the track and slammed into the soft barriers just off the racing surface in the fast Turn Two kink. He was sore, but walked away. With that bike written off, James feared that he wouldn’t get enough points to secure his Expert license for the following season. He bought a GSX-R600 from a stunter who had “beat the hell out of it” and prepped it for the track. He was back at Blackhawk in September, but in his rush to get out onto the track, he didn’t leave the tire warmers on long enough. The immediate result was a violent, grinding crash that broke the poor GSX-R600’s engine cases and launched it up onto the top of the trackside barriers. That was enough for that season. But it wasn’t the end of James’ racing career. He went to work full-time as an engineer and bought a Honda CBR1000RR. He slowly got back into the sport, spending some time doing track days and racing with MCRA again. Then he fell for one of the classic, “Hey, let’s go racing!” lines that sound like such a good idea at the time… “I had some friends who wanted to do the WERA National Endurance Series, and I’d agreed to do it, but that fell through,” James said. “But I was committed, so I decided to do it all by myself.” “It” was chasing the Michelin/WERA National Challenge Series Open Superstock Novice National Championship. It meant a lot of time on the road for James; from his base in Illinois, he would have to travel to Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Utah. And it meant that he would be racing mostly on tracks he’d never seen before. James had a rocky start on the first weekend, at Roebling Road Raceway. He had stuffed the bike into the back of the pickup truck, and couldn’t get the Honda out of the bed when he arrived at Roebling. He needed help just to get the bike onto the ground. And he was nowhere in practice on Friday. But Saturday-morning’s practice was encouraging, and by the time the first green flag dropped, he was ready. James finished second in the A Superbike Novice race and won the A Superstock Novice and Formula One Novice races on Saturday, then won the Open Superstock Novice National race on Sunday. “Coming out of the gate that quick, that fast, was a big high for me,” James says. Sometimes you need that high to get you through the lows. The very next race, rain and a crash truly put a damper on James’ racing experience. He had to scramble to bodge the exhaust system back together for the big CBR; his girlfriend ran tires back and forth to the Dunlop vendor. (And yes, James says he was advised at the track to hang onto that girlfriend at all costs!) “(I was) pushing too hard and just not thinking clearly. It was a real tough weekend,” James says. After that, the season got better. Sometimes, the trick to success is simply making it through the tough spots. James finished fourth in his next two National outings, then earned a win in dodgy conditions at Miller Motorsports Park. Another pair of fourths and a second in the last three races sealed the deal. “It’s a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. It’s a huge accomplishment,” James says.”You meet a lot of friends along the way. My girlfriend has traveled across the country with me. My mom made two races. And my dad came back from Afghanistan to see me race at the GNF. That was pretty awesome.”