To read more articles like this one originally published in the September 2016 print issue of Roadracing World, subscribe to Roadracing World.
By Michael Gougis
If you can’t train with five-time World Champion Jorge Lorenzo, you can train with his father, Chicho. Belmont, California youngster Maxwell Toth, age 10, has been doing exactly that for about three years now, and the elder Lorenzo has even stayed at the family’s home to help bring Toth’s racing skills along.
Max Toth training on a Metrakit SP50 on the Stockton Motorplex Park track. Photo courtesy Bert Toth.
“We were going to Mallorca to stay with him when his original training camp opened,” says Max’s father, Bert Toth. “We reached out to him and he said that he was going to be in Florida so we didn’t have to travel that far. We met him in Florida and we worked with him there and from that point on we stayed in touch.”
In his travels to Europe, where he races with the CIV Junior series in Italy, the younger Toth has trained with Chicho and others, relentlessly doing drills on turning. When in the States, Bert video records his son’s exercises and shares them with Chicho, who critiques the performances and offers suggestions for improvements (see Roadracing World, May 2016).
“At one point we had him come out to our house and he stayed here for a week. I rented a local kart track and we worked there. With his method, it was interesting because only on the last day did we go out onto the track. The rest of the training was with cones and figure eights and slower exercises. It’s hard to wrap your head around it at first,” Bert Toth says.
Chicho Lorenzo and Max Toth at Stockton Motorplex Park in northern California. Photo courtesy Bert Toth.
“The Spanish figured it out—they have to figure out a training method to teach road racing. Chicho was the first to create a method of how to create road racing riders. It’s not just developing skills, but it’s how fast you develop those skills. The more you know about figure eights, the more you know how important they are. You have to be able to turn left and right identically as much as possible. If you don’t know how to do that, you don’t know how to turn. And then your braking isn’t right. Repetition creates muscle memory. And it develops you into a better rider. People like to call things cross-training, but it’s only cross-training if you’re also training road racing.”
The younger Toth says the training has been invaluable to prepare him for the insanely intense competition that is youth racing in Italy. “It has helped me a lot and made me feel a lot more comfortable on the bike, but it’s not easy,” he says. “Most of the method consists of figure eights in a confined area and different cone distances. We measure our progress by timing 10 laps around the cones so we can follow our progress and see if we are getting better or just staying in the same position, which would be bad. After three years, I got pretty darn good at it! And believe it or not, there is still plenty of room for improvement.”
Max Toth training at KSB Sport in Spain, with Chicho Lorenzo supervising, as Jorge Navarro waits his turn. Photo courtesy Bert Toth.
Racing in Italy is hard, but getting better always is, Max Toth believes. “The kids in Italy are super fast and competitive, which is good for me,” he says. “What I learned the most is aggression! The kids in Italy are very kind in the paddock. Most of my best friends are in Italy. But once they hit the track, they are as aggressive as a swarm of wasps!”
To read more articles like this one originally published in the September 2016 print issue of Roadracing World, subscribe to Roadracing World.