Craig Anderson became a household name within Australian motocross and supercross after a decorated career at the top of our sport at a domestic level, along with an impressive stint in the US contesting the AMA motocross and supercross championships.

2012 saw Anderson make the decision to hang up his boots and officially retire from professional competition, this move will now allow him to focus solely on building his Berry Sweet/Lucas Oil/Yamaha team for the future.

MotoOnline.com.au caught up with the likable character to talk about his final season, life after racing and plans for his race team heading into the upcoming 2013 season.

Craig Anderson had a very long and decorated motocross career. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

You officially retired from professional competition after the final 2012 ASX round. How do you feel your final season went and are you satisfied with the way you finished up your career?

Yeah, I mean as a racer and winning a lot of races, every racer wants to win. So from a results point of view, I wasn’t 100 percent happy, but everything else moving forward, the team getting bigger and better and making it work – I’m happy with that. I’m really pumped about my career ending in Newcastle. There is not a lot of athletes or anyone like that, that gets to finish in their hometown. So to have that, it was awesome.

Speaking about your official retirement at Newcastle, being the hometown round with your friends and family around you, along with your cousin Chad Reed, that had to be the perfect send off for you?

Yeah it was perfect, Chad and I had our first race together and we raced pretty well our whole careers together. So to have him there, as well as my family, friends and everyone there in Newcastle it’s perfect. And Newcastle always pulls a good crowd, so yeah it was sweet.

Since hanging up your boots, what have you been getting up to on a daily basis?

Straight after the Newcastle supercross we did some testing straight away, on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with Tye [Simmonds] – He’s had a bike since then.

So we haven’t really had a day off yet, we’ve just been wide open getting our old race bike back together to put up for sale and getting it all happening. So it’s been good, it’s been enjoyable going to the workshop everyday and just doing little things putting everything back together.

I’ve been doing a lot of coaching still, I still do a lot of my private coaching through the week, so that’s still the same. But yeah, I’ve just been going to the workshop everyday and trying to make things better.

Anderson was served with a fitting send off at Newcastle’s final round of the 2012 Terex Australian Supercross Championships. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

After signing Simmonds to the team recently, how far along are you with your testing and 2013 preparations at this point?

We just basically got him a base setting, we had two different bikes for him to try – two different setups. So we just wanted to get him comfortable and to pick which one he wanted.

So we really haven’t done a massive amount of testing, but we just got him comfortable enough that he could go away, do some riding, ride on some different sort of tracks and then come back to us. He comes back at the end of this week to do a little bit more testing before Christmas.

So we haven’t really done a crazy amount, but we’ve got a whole bunch of other stuff for him to try when he gets back. I really believe if we can put a good program together for him, have him on song and focused on going racing, he can win races.

Finally, will you be fielding another rider alongside Simmonds for 2013?

It’s going to be just Tye on the 450. We’ve sort of taken a bit of a different approach this year, instead of having two or three guys on the team, we’ve gone with just Tye – he’s our main guy.

Then we have myself that’s going to be doing the vets championship, we’re talking to Jessica Patterson at the moment to come over and do the women’s championship. We also have a kid from Western Australia that will do the two junior races over here aswell.

So we just really want to get a bunch of people that are going to be up front in all different classes. So we’re really focusing on Tye and winning races.