No ego, just tons of talent

You may think professional motocross racers are a jaded bunch who take top-flight machinery for granted, but you won't catch a whiff of that from Ben Townley. A 23-year-old Kiwi who is new to the Honda Red Bull Racing team, Townley has won championships on three continents. Yet his eyes still sparkle when he talks about his first ride on a Honda motocross bike-and a stock one at that!

"When I was still in New Zealand and I knew I was coming to ride on the Honda Red Bull Racing team, I got a stock CRF450R and did some riding on my farm. I wanted to try one before I arrived here in America and got my racebike from the team.

"This was my first time on a Honda CRF, and I really enjoyed it-I couldn't believe how good a stock bike could feel right out of the crate from a dealership! I felt like I fit it well, and that's something that's really important for me-I have to feel very comfortable on a bike if I'm going to do well, and it felt right from day one."
And that was just the beginning. After settling into life on the Honda Red Bull Racing team, things only got better for Townley. "The ergonomics between the CRF450R and CRF250R are pretty similar, so that has also worked out real well. Now that I have my racebikes, I've found that the size of my CRF250R also suits me well. The ergonomics are so good it's made it easy for me to jell with the bike, and I'm really happy with that. "On the track, Honda's CRF250R chassis is really good for Supercross; it turns extremely well, and that makes life easier for me. It also has an engine that's quite torquey, with a wide range of power, and that makes it easy to ride. And the brakes on the CRF250R are unreal! That was the very first thing I noticed about the bike. I'm a big front-brake person, and I immediately noticed the CRF250R has huge braking power in the front. As a whole package the Honda CRF is an amazingly good bike for racing at the pro level." Townley began racing while quite young and soon conquered everything in sight in his home country, New Zealand. So it was time to broaden his horizons-at an astonishingly young age.

"As a kid, growing up I loved racing," he explained. "I was about six years old when I started racing. As I got older I watched Motocross and Supercross races on TV from America. It became a dream of mine to race in America. But being a rider from New Zealand, it's pretty hard to find the way to get to the USA to race. "When I was 16, I got the opportunity to race for a team in Europe. So I took that opportunity and raced the World Championship Series. I was hoping if I did well in Europe, one day I'd get that plane ticket to America and a team here. It was a big step to go to the World Championships from New Zealand-the biggest step I've taken so far in my career. I was only 15 and had just finished second in the New Zealand championship, in my first year as a pro. To start from where I was in New Zealand to where I would be racing in Europe was a big leap, and it all happened within a matter of about six months. "It was exciting leaving home; at the time I couldn't wait to go. Then once I got over there, it was the middle of winter in Europe! Once I got my routine, got going and got rolling, everything worked out. But that was a hard time right in the beginning.

"I learned more in that first year than anything I've done in racing. I went from being nowhere to the top 10 in the world and then winning a World Championship, and that was a huge gap. I had a few hard times but never worried about being away because I knew where I wanted to be, which was America. I knew I had to keep my eye on the prize."
Now Townley has made the transition to America, collecting a Lites championship along the way before joining the Honda Red Bull Racing team.