After a tough year in Europe contesting the GPs, 2013 national MX2 champion Luke Styke is back in Australia where he joins Kirk Gibbs on the KTM Motocross Racing Team to tackle his first year in the MX1 class. We spoke to Stykesy as he landed after a quick trip to New Zealand over the weekend and hit him up with five mixed questions starting with ‘Why’.

Image: Andy McGechan (BikesportNZ.com).

Why have you come back to Australia after a year in Europe?

I feel like I wasn’t ready to step up to the 450 class, but I had aged out of the MX2 class. Ideally I would’ve liked another year in MX2, but I wasn’t going to pursue the same bike with the same team – it really wasn’t working out with that package. I felt like the team wasn’t good enough and I’m now lucky to be back in Australia on the best race team here. I made a quick call to Rob [Twyerould] and he was keen to get me on board for 2015 and things snowballed from there. We’ve already kicked off the season and it’s looking good so far.

Why didn’t it work out with your MXGP team last year?

I had a bad mechanic who didn’t speak to me and wouldn’t even pit board for me at the races. It was that bad my girlfriend was going to start doing it instead. On top of that the bike wasn’t good enough; it was slow, but the team didn’t want to do anything about it. It was frustrating and they were blaming me as if I was the problem. It got to the point where I decided I had to make the best of the situation and try and do the best I could. It’s crazy that they call themselves one of the most professional teams in Europe – I can tell you the Aussie teams could run rings around a lot of the teams over there! When I got injured in Finland, that was the cherry on top, really, and I began looking for a ride back home.

Why did and spend most of Australia Day on planes?

I just got back from a weekend trip to New Zealand were me and Gibbsy raced Woodville, which is one of the big stand-alone races over there. It was good to start the season off on the 450 for the first time in a race that mattered, and see how the body was feeling. The MX1 class is a big step up from MX2 and the track was brutal. It was really dry, rough and low-speed. We changed the bike set-up a bit as the day went on and ended up with 5-4-5 results for fourth overall. For the four-lap feature race in the middle of the day the organisers put a big lot of water down. It wasn’t a race that really meant anything so I went out and played around with a trick little part on the bike. I finished eighth, but I treated it more as a testing session.

Source: KTM.

Why haven’t you set a wedding date after getting engaged last year?

Yeah, I got engaged to my fiancée, Bonnie two months ago. We’d been going out for five years and she’s been with me and stuck by me through thick and thin. She’s an awesome girl and I wouldn’t have made it this far without her. Basically we haven’t set a date yet because I’d like to try and go to the States and race a season or so over there. We’re planning on having the wedding three years down the track. I’m only 23 and I want to get the travel out of the way first before planning the next chapter of our lives.

Why do you ride?

I love getting up every morning faced with the perfect lifestyle, training hard and that feeling I get when I win races. You can’t replicate that emotion – it does funny things to your stomach! I love pushing myself to the next level and the thrill you get from racing and riding with your mates, mate, you can’t beat it.