After his third season banging bars with the America’s finest, 19-year-old Australian Jackson Richardson impressed many with a brace of top 10 finishes during the Monster Energy AMA Supercross 250SX East Coast Championship.

MotoOnline.com.au caught up with ‘Jatz’ after a day of outdoors training to get the inside word on his best supercross campaign to date.

Image: Simon Cudby.

Great finish to the season, man. You seemed to really find your feet as the championship wore on and finished off with 10th at NJ and a ninth at Vegas. You must be stoked.

Yeah the last two seasons I had to play catch-up after I broke my collarbone before the 2013 season and was just back on my feet for 2014 after breaking my femur at Hervey Bay last year. I didn’t get in much supercross training or preparation at home at all, and it was soon after I got here that I went straight on the road to Dallas. As the season went on we found our feet and got comfortable and my results picked up towards the end.

The ninth place on the weekend was my best result, especially after a shocking start. I went down in the first turn, then again at the end of the first straight and was basically half a lap down. I wasn’t happy, but I came back really well on what was a tough track. In the East-West Shootout I again didn’t get a good start my made up a lot of spots on the first lap. Once I got into 13th I settled back and rode more conservatively. I just wanted to get through the race safely as it’s not a points-scoring race. It would’ve been awesome to get a top 10, but I didn’t want to crash my brains out with the outdoors starting in a couple of weeks.

As you touched on, this was your third year competing in the US. Now that you’ve got a bit of experience, is it getting easier?

I think it’s definitely easier mentally. Because I had a couple of seasons under my belt I knew what to expect and what I was getting myself into. But competition wise, the level has stepped up a lot. The East Coast had a stacked field, so I was really happy to finish the season on a high.

What was the biggest thing you learnt this year?

Just to settle down mentally. Last season, and probably at the start of 2014, I struggled a lot with qualifying, but would get better as the weekend went on. This weekend I qualified seventh, which was my personal best. As far as racecraft goes, I’ve learnt to be a lot more precise with my jump timing. I didn’t realise how much casing a jump – even a little bit – took it out of me. There’s no room for error and if you aren’t on your game, the jumps will bite you like they did a lot of top guys this year.

What was the highlight of the season for you?

There were a lot of them, but getting to race in New York was pretty cool. I’d only been there when I was real young so I didn’t remember much. It was good to be a part of the first race there and it was the round where I broke the top 10 in the main for the first time. Vegas was the best I’ve ridden this year, so that was right up there too.

Image: Simon Cudby.

You competed in the entire East Coast championship as a privateer. There’re some huge distances you have to cover during the season.

Oh yeah, it’s hard. There’s more travel time on the East Coast and there were some races where we drove 17 hours – that’s a lot of miles! I don’t know how many miles we covered, but it was tough, especially going from New York to Vegas. It was just me and my mum driving for 48 hours. During the season we’re based at MTF in Georgia, but over the three-week break in the series we had to fly home as my three months visitor visa was up. I was home for two weeks and three days, then got back on the plane.

So what are your plans now? Are you racing the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship?

We’re currently testing and will race the first three rounds of the outdoors at Glen Helen, Hangtown and Colorado, then we’ll fly back home to Australia and get our visas sorted out again, then we’ll see what happens. I don’t have much planned after we finish up here, but it’d be nice to do some of the rounds of the MX Nationals. I’ll have just come off the AMA outdoors, and three of the last four rounds will be in Queensland, so it’d be nice to do for sure. I’ve definitely thought about it, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s been a big year.

You’re not wrong, mate. Well, enjoy the couple of weeks off before Glen Helen, good luck for the first three rounds, and I hope to see you at some of the MX Nationals.

Thanks, mate. Talk to you soon.