Tuesday Conversation: Larry Pegram

Ducati Foremost Insurance team owner and rider Larry Pegram has always been known as a hard-charger, but prior to the recent Road America round, it had been ten years since one of his charges led straight to the top step of the winners’ circle. Not that Larry was counting, of course.

RRX: Have you heard about our new cover? You’re on it.
Larry Pegram: No, I didn’t know that. But you know, it doesn’t really count, because I won the race—you have to put me on the cover now. You guys promised to put me on the cover way before this, so it’s cheating. I need two covers now; you guys owe me one more.

I’m impressed that you’re not even excited.
Because I want to see it—I’m waiting ‘til I actually see it. I mean, I’m very excited, it’s just that I’ve been waiting so long for it…. Okay, I’m just giving you guys crap.

I know, and it’s true you earned it with that win. And you knew, heading into Road America, that it was going to be a good track for you, right?
Yeah, it’s always a good track for me as a rider, and I knew our bike would be good there on top speed, plus it always rains there, and I don’t mind the rain either. So I was pretty confident going into that weekend.

Talk about how the race played out from your perspective.
We weren’t as fast in the dry as I would have hoped, but then I kind of got up to speed Saturday morning, finally got rolling pretty good, and I was doing that with the hardest tires on. We started the weekend with the soft tires, and it was just chewing up immediately, so even though it definitely had a little more grip, Massimo and I made the decision that the soft tire wasn’t going to work, so we started working with the hard tire straight away. Saturday morning we finally got the thing working pretty good, then it rained Saturday, so Sunday I was pretty confident that we could go fast with the harder tire and be there at the end, so I just wanted to get a good start and stay close so I’d have a chance at the end, but instead I got a good start and went to the lead on the first lap going into Turn 5. So even on that harder tire we were able to run up front most of the race.

So I was leading it and kind of waiting for someone to come by, because I was going pretty fast but not record-breaking times, then Mat finally came by on the sixth lap and I thought to myself, “Just stay with him and see what you can do; he’ll pull you away from everybody else.” But then he was making some mistakes and not pulling away—he was actually holding me up in a few places—so I started checking behind me, saw that Aaron and Blake were still coming, and thought I’d better try to pass Mat back. But every time I’d pass him he’d come back by on the brakes and we started slowing each other down more [laughs] because he was running me wide a few times and it just became a battle, back and forth. So at that point I was just countering—every time he’d make a move, I’d made a counter-move—and then about two laps from the end he ran into Turn 3 and ran us both wide, but I kind of saw him coming out of the corner of my eye and checked up a bit, so he ran a lot wide than I did on the exit and I gapped him right there, then put my head down and did two good laps. He did one good lap at the end and not two, and that was the difference.

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