Tuesday Conversation: Josh Herrin

Though the 2009 AMA Pro season wasn’t necessarily a smooth one for Graves Yamaha’s Josh Herrin, he dominated the last four Daytona SportBike races and finished second in class points. We caught up with Herrin after he’d returned home from competing in the AMA Racing Road Race Grand Championships at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, the weekend after the AMA Pro series wrapped up.

RRX: How did your Grand Championships weekend at Mid-Ohio go?
Josh Herrin: Pretty good! Since the season is over and my brother was racing, we figured we’d just go have some fun. So, a guy from a company called GPTech that makes brake levers and all that stuff had a 450 single for me to race. USGPRU was there and they had a 450 Singles class, and then CCS had one also; we did those races and won them both.

How was it riding one of the 450s?
It was really cool actually, and I’m hearing that they may have a class for it in AMA in the next couple of years. For me, it definitely was a fun bike to ride. It didn’t have any problems all weekend, and the guy that was working on it said it was really low-maintenance. There was nothing that he had to do that was out of the ordinary. The racing was really, really good, because the bikes are really close to each other, and I had a lot of fun on it. I have no complaints.

As a rider who’s done both, how would you compare the old Supersport class to the new Daytona SportBike class in terms of the competition?
I think it was more competitive this year; I think the series altogether was a lot better. A lot of people complained about the rolling starts, and I don’t really have anything against it. It kind of showed at a couple races that it has been a little dangerous, but that’s just because it’s the first year they’ve run it like that. Next year we’re not going to be doing it.

Racing against the Buell, for me, it was fun. At the beginning of the year it kind of sucked, and I was on the side that it shouldn’t really be out there, but toward the end of the year when we started doing good and got our bike the way we wanted it to be, and we were able to beat the Buell, it felt really good. It felt like maybe the Buell should be in the class, it was just really hard to beat at first. It definitely has a power advantage, but our bike has some advantages over that as well.

You finished second in points this year and obviously finished strong, but you had a few blips during the middle of the season. Talk a little about that.
I think that the season for us was awesome. We had everything going good, and then at Barber we ended up getting a bad tire, had to come in and pit, and got no points. Then at Infineon, [Danny] Eslick threw a rock through our radiator out in the dirt, and at Cal Speedway we didn’t do as well as we’d wanted to, and those were the three races that set us back. If we didn’t do so badly in those races, we probably would have won by over sixty points. We didn’t have that great of luck, and then at a couple of tests maybe we slacked off a little bit and didn’t get what we needed to get done, and it cost us in the end. At least we ended up finishing the season really well, and we know where we are for next year.

Toward the end of the season you had a number of second-place finishes, and ended with four wins. Did you find something with the setup of the bike or was it something else?
I think that last year, I had a bunch of problems with my personal life, and I think that we sorted it all out toward the middle of the season this year. It seemed like that was the last piece [keeping me] from doing really good, and it just sort of turned around from there. I think, like everyone always says, racing is ninety percent between the ears, and I think that was definitely a proven fact for me this year; I was able to get my mind straight, and felt like I could dominate. It was so easy for me to win those last four races.

You’ve mentioned a desire to possibly move to Moto2. Have you had any movement on that front, or will you be back in Daytona SportBike next year?
I think that next year we will probably stay over here, but we don’t know which class we’re going to be doing. I already had a deal with Yamaha for this year, so we had to stay here, but I am happy to be with Yamaha. If the opportunity to race over in Europe for Yamaha had come up, I definitely would have pushed for it. I’m really interested in going over to Moto2 [for 2011]. I hope that Yamaha has a team there by then. I think that would be a great stepping-stone for me.

Do you have any plans for the off-season?
Actually, my dad and I have a go-kart track at our house, and we run a bunch of mini-bike series, super-moto clubs, and YSR racing, and we have our own club starting. It’s just going to be a winter series, and we’re going to be paying a lot of attention to that. It helps me, too, because I get a lot of training out of it, being able to ride super-moto pretty much every day. So, that’s going to be my excitement for the winter, but I really just can’t wait to start testing, figuring out if I’m going to be riding the superbike or the 600. I’m pretty excited at seeing how well Josh [Hayes] did at the end of the season on the R1. I know that either class I do, I’m going to have a really competitive bike, so I have no excuses to not perform.

Anything you’d like to add?
Actually, yes. For the past four years, Curtice Thom has been my crew chief, and he’s leaving the team and moving on. I just wanted to say thanks for the past couple of years.