Ride Rage Radio this week spoke with Troy Herfoss and with their permission we have produced this transcript from the audio recording.
RRR: The best news that’s happened in the last couple of weeks, is that Troy Herfoss has been confirmed as an official member of the Factory Honda team to compete for the rest of the 2014 Swann Superbike Championship Series. Troy, firstly, from all of us here, congratulations on your signing with Team Honda, but after the first round, they didn’t have much choice, did they? That was a fantastic first round for a man that hadn’t been on a bike competitive in the Australian Championship for quite some time. 18 months off a Superbike pretty much..
Troy: Yeah, thanks guys, it was great to be back on the bike and just a massive bonus to get the extra support from Honda. They definitely help you, you just don’t realize how much support you get, until you get out there with your own bike, trying to get the thing going. But it was definitely good to have Freebie and Team Honda.
RRR: An interesting statistic, another good statistic is that you actually held the lap record not only for a motorcycle, but also for a push-bike as well.
Troy: Yeah, yeah, I had it for 24 hours or so until Jamie nabbed me. Yeah, I’ve done a fair bit of racing out there on a pushbike in the year or so I had off.
RRR: But we know that you’ve been cycling and your level of fitness is certainly right up there, Troy, but you’ve had the opportunity to get back down to Mallala, the scene of the second round of the championship, and throw your leg over the motorcycle there. Have you ever raced at Mallala before? Because it’s been five years since the championship’s been there.
Troy: Yeah, my first year of racing on a road bike, we were racing on the 600, yeah, it was a fun little track, it was a bit wet at the time when we went there for the race, but we got dry racing. But it was sort of a bit funny, after five years I’ll probably had to start from the beginning almost, really. It was just good to get down there the first time work with Kainy, my crew chief Jason Kain and mechanic, and it was just good to be out there, riding again, really. I’m just enjoying every time I get my bike, I think that reflected Wakefield in the results I had. Probably the time I felt most rusty was when I was out there in the races, trying to overtake and race, whereas on my own I felt sort of okay. But I think the main thing I missed after that year off was the other race time and I just felt a bit rusty, but hopefully we can critique that for this weekend and be right up there.
RRR: I’m glad you mentioned Jason Kain as well, because I think it’s great the fact that you’ve got someone that has been there and done that in the old Formula Extreme Championship and someone that you obviously get along with incredibly well, both from Goulburn, both pretty handy on push-bikes as well, and you seem to have a great rapport with Jason and that’s clearly evident in the way that you work with each other.
Troy: Yeah, for sure. Jason’s sort of… like a lot of young guys find it hard to listen to their dad, but they’ll listen to someone like Kainy. It’s only as typical, not that I’ve got a bad relationship with my dad, we’ve got a great relationship, but I think Kainy was always that type of guy I looked up to, he was road racing when I was young, he was probably the only one from around town doing it, and he’s a really down to earth, calculated guy and he’s the type of guy that you can feel comfortable with when he’s putting your brakes together and doing the important stuff on the bike. So I just like the way he thinks and with him being in that situation before, he knows what to say, like it’s easy to put something in a riders his head, just before they go out and do some qualifying in the wet, but Kainy just said to me, ‘It’s only a sprinkle, just get out there, it’s fine.’ And rather than just saying, ‘Look, it’s wet, you have to be careful,’ and straight away that takes a couple of tenths off your lap time, really. But I think Kainy, he knows what to do in certain situations, it is definitely new to him, working directly on the bike. There’s a lot of stuff that Paul and Sean and Wazza, the other mechanics at Honda at the moment, they know the bikes really well, they’ve worked on the shock and the fork a lot and that kind of stuff, Kainy’s going to have to learn. But as far as setup, I think once we get to the race, maybe there’s a bit more pressure on him, he’ll come out of his shell a bit and once we learn how to talk to each other, and which way we’re going to understand what to do, we should go forward. So we’ve definitely got a good relationship, so I’m happy to be working with him.
RRR: Now at the first round you were filling in for the injured Josh Hook, Troy. You’ve had the use of his bike, I presume. What’s the story about the bike that you’ll be riding this weekend? Is it a brand new bike that they’ve prepared, or have they given you the bike that you rode there at the first round and prepared another bike for Josh?
Troy: Yeah, so, the first round I rode Josh’s bike with Josh’s mechanic, Sean, and basically just fully filled in for him, and my bike was there as a spare really. So at Mallala I rode out on a brand new bike. So, yeah all four of us are riding the new SP model and it’s a great bike and we’ve found even more with it, at Mallala we’re really starting to feel comfortable on it. So, yeah, I just can’t wait to get out there, it’s just so good to be part of a team again and I’m so grateful to be able to get straight back into racing and be with probably the best team in Australia.
RRR: And what’s it like to work with someone like Paul Free? You’ve got, as we said, Jason Kain came behind you, who’s been there, done that. But Paul Free has been there, done that a lot before as well, former rider, and the head man at Team Honda Racing.
Troy: Yeah, Paul, he’s an interesting guy. I’ve never really worked with him and over the years we’ve had small conversations, but we probably don’t know each other that well, but he’s been great, really supportive of my racing this year and I’ve definitely got him and Glyn Griffiths at Honda to thank for it, they’ve really got behind me. I think Paul could probably tell that I generally wanted to be out there, whether I was riding my own bike, supporting everything myself, I was going to be out there racing, I think that made a big difference and once I got on the bike at Wakefield, it sort of all come together. But he’s a very competitive sort of guy, you can tell you need to get results and he’s been at a high level before, he knows what it takes and he knows probably what we’re capable of, and so he expects the best from the riders and yeah, it’s a good atmosphere to be in. I mean, having my three teammates, arguably the three best riders out there, and so at the tests, for instance, at Mallala, we were sort of parked together and we were out there riding around and at that stage of the weekend, you’re slowest guy in the pit and you’re thinking your weekend is going bad, or your test is going bad, and then you go out and get some lap times and you realise that you’re probably the fourth quickest behind the three other Honda guys, so that’s really a competitive garage this year.
RRR: Troy, just finally, before we let you go and get ready for this weekend, what is your favourite part of the Mallala circuit, where’s the point that you think that your abilities are really suited to, because it is a pretty tight and tricky circuit?
Troy: Yeah, I definitely enjoy the circuit, it’s scary in places when you first get out there. The top gear right hander is obviously really fast and I never really got that sort of dialled in at the test, but, you know, after that, you come into the hairpin there at first gear, on the Superbike you short-shift all the way to fourth gear there, and you can just open the big girl up and light the rear tyre up, so that’s probably my favourite part.
RRR: Well, Troy, can’t wait to see you doing it on the weekend. I’m heading over to the Northern Hairpin on Friday and hope to take in a fair bit of the action there. Hope to catch up with you in the pits as well, but very best of luck for round two of the Swann Series, can’t wait to see you there.
Troy: Yep, thanks!
