To finish in the top five in dirt bike racing’s premiere series, riders need to trust their bike — and the person responsible for that machinery. Jason Anderson finished fifth in the points’ standings not once, but twice this year in Monster Energy Supercross and in Pro Motocross competition. He now enters next week’s SuperMotocross World Championship at zMax Dragway in Concord, North Carolina, seeded third in the standings.
And a huge part of the credit for that goes to Jason Montoya, Anderson’s mechanic since he moved to the Monster Energy Kawasaki Factory Team three years ago.
“It was kind of a question mark going into it because I had been with one team my whole career,” Anderson told NBC Sports after finishing fifth overall in the Budds Creek National in Mechanicsville, Maryland. “I had never worked with another group of people. You have your ups and downs as a team. Sometimes when the results aren’t as good, it’s a tough relationship because we get paid to do good.
“Even today, I ended up fifth overall, but it’s not what we want. It’s tough, but at the same time we’ve been able to dig ourselves out of this hole a few times and the coolest part is [the team] never quit and I hope they feel that out of me too.”
That was Anderson’s fifth consecutive overall top-five, a streak he accomplished with consistent speed and gutsy performance in the dog days of summer. Entering Moto 2 at Budds Creek, Anderson had a nine-race streak of moto top-fives. He got nipped by Justin Cooper at the end of Moto 2 and saw that streak end by a single position before finishing fifth in both motos last week at Ironman Raceway in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
One might say that his ever-growing top-five streak was the accumulation of a season’s work, and one would be correct. But a SuperMotocross campaign is comprised of individual races, which are made up of individual motos. One mistake along the way can derail an entire season, or worse, a career.
And that is where Montoya enters the picture.
Man Behind the Man
Notably, Anderson’s final season with the Husqvarna Factory Team ended abruptly with a freak mechanical issue. He broke his hand and knocked out some teeth in a practice crash following the 2021 Pro Motocross opener at Fox Raceway in Pala, California.
At the time, Montoya, known as Rango to his friends (and there are many in the pits), had been wrenching for Malcolm Stewart for the past eight years.
With the uncertainty of a new team in mind, the 2018 Supercross champion and Montoya bonded immediately.
"[Developing trust] took pretty much the whole off-season and probably could have taken longer,” Montoya told NBC Sports. “But we had such a good year in our first year. We won nine races that year. That made it a lot easier. And no mechanicals.
“We were vibing, hanging out. Good solid days turned into good solid weeks. He won more races that year than he won in his championship year. That helped the trust come faster.”
Those good solid weeks produced a second-place finish in Supercross championship with Anderson pressuring Eli Tomac for the title all the way through the season finale. When the checkers waved, Anderson was only nine points behind. Anderson he scored as many wins as Tomac with seven each.
Anderson finished third in Motocross that summer, adding final two more wins in 2022.
“You have to build trust with the rider you have,” Montoya said. “Sometimes guys are with riders for years and years. This is my third year with Jason, going on four years. You definitely have to have trust so they can lean on you when they are having bad days.
“Their life is in your hands. A pretty big mistake on the bike mechanics-wise and they can crash and get hurt. They have to trust and believe in you. That goes a long way to putting the puzzle together. It takes a lot more than just the rider to win.
“They need a good head space - to be happy and comfortable. There’s a lot of pressure on him and to have someone to talk to and lean on through the struggles.”
Is My ADD Showing?
Each week starts with a complete bike build.
Sitting outside the Monster Energy Kawasaki hauler in a hotel parking lot before the Budds Creek races, more than 250 component pieces sat waiting to be washed.
Each piece was hydro-blasted, scrubbed, and polished. Smaller pieces such as nuts and bolts went into a rock tumbler loaded with fine-grain maple nut shells to give them a special sheen.
Once the pieces shone like new pennies, they were relocated to the hauler where assembly began.
Montoya has a self-diagnosed Type A personality. He says he would not be as effective without a touch of Attention Deficit Disorder.
It’s his attention to detail that insures there are no mechanical or parts failures each week. Trusting that to be true is what allows Anderson to concentrate on speed.
On stainless steel counters inside the hauler, he meticulously lays out hundreds of bike parts. They are place in the same order as last week, the week before, and so on to the beginning of the season. That allows muscle memory takes over when he reaches for a nut, a bolt or electronic component.
“If you don’t take pride in [the bike] it’s not going to be any fun,” Montoya said. “When a rider shows up and they see how good it looks, it makes them feel even better. They see their bike, and they’re like, ‘Hell yeah, we’re ready to go now.’ ”
Over the course of the day, Anderson’s No. 21 Kawasaki takes shape. Montoya will pause to apply a little more polish if one of the pieces loses its luster and so he confesses to not being the fastest builder in the pits.
It’s much more difficult to keep the bike shiny under race conditions, especially in a muddy race like Budds Creek, but as soon as Anderson brings the bike back to the pits, it’s thoroughly washed and inspected once more.
The clutch and oil is changed between the sessions. Tire selection is an ongoing conversation and on a day like the one at Budds Creek with heavy rain in the morning and drying conditions throughout the day, that takes on added significance.
All of this is done without a hint of chaos. Decisions are quietly weighed in the hours between qualification and Moto 1. The second moto takes on greater significance because it is also the tiebreaker in the eventuality of a tie in points. By then, the die is cast.
On that muggy afternoon, Anderson left it all on the track, pulled in, stripped out of his soaking fire suit and relished in the relative comfort of jeans and a t-shirt.
Montoya hydro-blasted the bike one final time and on a normal weekend, he would have disassembled the bike into its 250+ component pieces. The storms that watered the track to start the day returned with a vengeance and forced the team to load the hauler quickly. Before Ironman, Montoya did double duty: breaking down the bike one day before Press Day in order to put it all back together immediately.
Rest assured, the process did not falter and Anderson capped off the 2024 Pro Motocross season with another pair of top-fives.
“Whenever you are at this level as a top 450 guy, the mechanic is really everything” Anderson said. “It’s just as important as our trainer, our team manager. Rango is in the spot to be one of the mechanics on this team for a reason. He’s really good at what he does.”
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