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AMA SX: Interview: Kawasaki Manager Mike Fisher
Monster Energy Kawasaki team manager Mike Fisher talks about the rapidly approaching 2011 AMA Supercross season.
Kawasaki Racing  |  Posted November 19, 2010   Irvine, CA
Monster Energy Kawasaki's Mike Fisher and Jake Weimer (Photo: Kawasaki Racing)

Monster Energy Kawasaki team manager Mike Fisher has almost seen it all in supercross and motocross. With the 2011 AMA Monster Energy Supercross, an FIM World Championship season coming up fast, we checked in with “Fish” to see how the preparations are coming.

Monster Energy Kawasaki: How has your off-season been?

Mike Fisher: Did we even have an off-season? Right after Motocross of Nations, I took a short vacation with my fiancé to the wine country of Oregon and then flew straight to Kawasaki’s dealer meeting. It was a great turnout of enthusiastic dealers and we went from there right into testing. We haven’t had any slow time yet. We have one more, hard week and then we’ll take a short break for Thanksgiving before getting back into it to get ready for Anaheim 1 on January 8. It has been a whirlwind these last few months getting Jake (Weimer) up to speed but it is great to have him and Ryan (Villopoto) together on the team. Both of them ride together well and they get along great while staying professional.

It seems a lot of people think this is a down time for the teams and the riders, is that a fair statement?

MF: In the past it seems this was a slow time, especially for the riders. But that has changed and I can tell you for these two guys, it’s not a slow time. For our team it’s not a slow time, this is our busiest time. These guys are working hard every day and it is awesome. Their new trainer (Aldon Baker) has them on a great track.

When the team is testing with the riders what are the looking for?

MF: I think at the beginning they’re not 100% sure. Ryan has a better idea because he has ridden the KX450F for two years and we have notes on him. So we can see where he wanted to improve from last season. With Jake, he’s not sure. The first time he rode the bike he was like ‘this is very good,’ but we gave him some test parts we had, some that we had made for Ryan and he liked those changes. Both guys seem to like the same things, despite the fact that they ride different. Ryan rides on the back of the bike more and he throttles it and uses the rear end more than Jake. So their base settings are close with just some tweaks in the suspension and engine settings.

Have there been many changes to the bike this year?

MF: We have a lot of changes this year. They are all just small refinements that we worked with KHI (Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Japan) on to improve some areas. In supercross the tight tracks and the power of the 450 make the chassis a big deal. We are really working with the chassis to make it even more nimble and easier to control. Our bike has always been really stable and we just wanted to see if we could make it even more nimble. Overall you can’t say anything negative about our bike in 2010, we won so many races and Ryan didn’t want to change much. We have a lot of new parts, but we seem to fall back on a lot of the old parts.
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