From humble beginnings helping out his buddies as a mechanic on the weekends, Ben Lane slowly moved his way up the ranks throughout the years and now, for 2013, finds himself in an interesting and exciting position.

Lane worked as a mechanic for quite some time with a bunch of Australia’s most respected teams and riders, most recently working with Jay Marmont last year under the Monster Energy Kawasaki tent.

For this year Lane’s career has taken a slightly different route, scoring the team manager’s role with the Raceline Pirelli Suzuki squad. MotoOnline.com.au caught up with the 25-year-old to talk about his new venture, read on the see how it all came to be and his plans for the future of the team.

Ben Lane’s most recently worked as Jay Marmont’s mechanic with the Monster Energy Kawasaki team in 2012. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

Firstly, tell us a little bit about your background within the sport and how you got a start working with some of the best teams in the business?

I started with racing in C grade, we’d go do the Sunny State series and a lot of my mates were B graders or pros. So I’d race Saturday, they would race Sunday and I’d just mechanic for them for free. I was at a race one day and Troy Carroll saw me working for my mates for nothing and he offered me a part time job in 2007 with Cool Air.

In 2008 they had a full-time job going, so I took that and I’ve basically been doing that ever since.

After spending years working with Carroll and the Kawasaki crew, how did the deal with Raceline Pirelli Suzuki all come about?

Just before supercross last year I had made up my mind that I would go to Europe and work for factory Kawasaki over there. Everything was sorted out, I told Troy that I was going and everything was sorted to go – I had pretty much started packing my house up and all of that.

But I got pretty sick over Christmas and the doctors told me that it was a smart idea if I didn’t go travelling all over the world, and that I should stay here and get myself better. So unfortunately I had the turn the job down in Europe, so kind of looked like I was going to be out of racing for 2013.

Luckily I had kept in touch with Jay and Ryan Marmont, they had become good friends last year. Ryan told me about the job with Raceline Pirelli Suzuki and it all happened pretty quick, in a matter of days it was all put together and happening. So I was pretty thankful for that to come along because I could have been out of a job.

The Raceline Pirelli Suzuki team is obviously not the factory Suzuki team in Australia, but what kind of support does the team still receive from the manufacturer?

We’re still a Suzuki team and they help us out quite a bit, we get bikes and parts, stuff like that. As everyone knows, times are pretty tough these days and how much a manufacturer can give you is limited – that’s just how it is with everyone.

They still help us out a lot with all the info that we need, but we do work on a lot of it ourselves and a lot of the funding comes from the Tisdale’s. Without those guys the whole thing wouldn’t happen. So a lot of it comes out of the Tisdale’s pocket just because they love racing and they’re so passionate about it.

It’s good to see a family like that, they have been in it for so long and they’re willing to be in forever. But Suzuki do help us out, although it is limited in what we can get these days.

This year you have Ryan Marmont and Geran Stapleton competing in the MX2 class. The riders are at almost complete opposite ends of the spectrum – Marmont the veteran and Stapleton the young up and coming rider. Do you think this combination of experience and young fresh energy will work well, allowing the riders to feed off of each other during the season?

Yeah it’s really good, it’s a good mix of guys I think. I get along with both of them really well and you’re right, it’s different to have two guys with one being so young, he’s just starting his career off. Then you have Ryan who’s pretty much a veteran of the sport.

It’s a good mix, Geran can learn a lot off Ryan by watching the way he presents himself in the media being very well spoken and all of those little things. Geran can pick up on all of that stuff, and he’s already started to pick up on it, so it’s good having both those guys.

Ryan Marmont will bring a wealth of knowledge to the Raceline Pirelli Suzuki team in 2013. Image: Jeff Crow/The Sport Library.

I like working with Geran because he’s so young and hungry – he wants it so bad. He’s never done any testing or anything before, so it’s cool to see a young guy sort of start off and go through all of that. It is actually exciting for a young guy like him to experience that.

Ryan, like I said is a veteran of the sport, but he’s one of the best guys to work with. He’s one of the easiest guys to get along with in the pits and I really like him.

We all know Marmont is going to be strong and consistent, and we saw Stapleton put together some great rides last year, especially in the supercross series. So as we head into round one of the Monster Energy MX Nationals season, what are you expectations from both riders?

Come round one, if we can get both riders in the top five that would be perfect for us. It’s a long series and we don’t have to go out there and set the world on fire straight up – we’re just going to build into it and be consistent. There’s no pressure on the boys to go out there and beat everyone by 30 seconds at the first round or anything like that.

If we can get away with two top fives then I’m happy. There probably is a little bit more pressure on Ryan compared to Geran, but in saying that, Ryan can handle it. He knows what he has to do, I don’t have to tell him that he’s got to go out there and win – he’s got to go out there and be consistent.

For Geran I think this is a learning year I think, being on a team and dealing with the pressure of being on a team. Even though we don’t put pressure on him, it’s the pressure that the rider puts on themselves being in a team atmosphere. So he has to learn to deal with all of that.

There will be no pressure from us, it’s just the pressure they put on themselves. In the end, if the boys can go out there and run top fives every weekend, we’re going to be happy and that’s going to put us in the championship for sure.

Finally, for 2013 is there anything new in store for the team? Have you brought in any fresh sponsors and what can we expect to see being done differently within the team throughout the year?

Between myself and Ryan, we’ve brought in a few new sponsors. We’ve got FMF on board, Alpinestars, Bell Helmets and people like that. Myself and Ryan are trying to step up the profile of the team this year, bring a few new people aboard and people that we’ve worked with before.

We know it works and we’re basically just trying to fill our team with good people. Between myself and Ryan it’s working out really well, because he knows so many people, it makes my job a little easier.

My plan being in this sort of role, it’s something I really want to work at and build. Having the Tisdales and Suzuki behind us, it gives me the chance to be able to do that. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, but over the next few years we are just going to keep chipping away at it.

Step by step we’ll keep getting bigger and bigger, it’s definitely a work in progress. Chris Woods, the former manager, he did a great job and ran a solid program for years – I want to build off that and take it to the next level. But it’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s definitely a work in progress that’s for sure.