Nineteen-year-old Queenslander Jesse Dobson received the last-minute call-up to join Honda Racing alongside Cody Cooper to contest the 2017 New Zealand MX Nationals and has spent a bunch of time with former MX2 world champion and AMA East Coast 250SX champion Ben Townley at the same time. MotoOnline.com.au caught up with the Sunshine Coaster – who is yet to confirm his Australian plans for this year – to find out more about what he’s been up to.

Image: Simon Makker (Makkreative).

Jesse, you’re in New Zealand racing the national championship over there. How did that come about?

It was all very last-minute. The Honda team rider Johnny Phillips got hurt at the Woodville GP, just before the opening round of the nationals. I spoke with the team and they wanted someone to come to fill Johnny’s spot. I was basically just sitting on the couch at the time and I love coming to New Zealand, so we got it arranged pretty quickly. I was over here within two days and getting ready for round one. Everyone has just been awesome and that’s make it easy to fit right in.

How’s the competition been over there so far?

At the opening round at Timaru I felt like I rode well. I had no expectations at all and only had two days with the team, but it was a good start to the championship. I flew home afterward and did some testing, then came back for Rotorua, but I struggled there. My starts are never that great and I rely on being able to pass riders and make up ground, but at Rotorua I couldn’t get off the start and it was just one deep rut the whole way around the track, and if you missed it you were going over the bars. By the time I’d managed to get past a few riders Dean [Ferris], Todd [Waters] and Coops were gone. Those guys are riding awesome at the moment – I practice with Coops during the week and he’s on it.

I did notice you didn’t race the third round at Manawatu last weekend. What happened there?

Yeah, two weeks ago I went to the Clipsal 500 to have a go at the Enduro-X, but had a crash in practice when I tucked the bars and did something to my hand. I’ve broken bones in my hand before and it was showing the same symptoms, but nothing showed up in the scans. It was a bit frustrating, really. I went to the Manawatu round and tried the practice track across the road the day before racing, but I couldn’t even roll half a lap. I had to sit that round out, and it sucked because the dirt was similar to Coolum and the track looked awesome.

Gutted. How’s the hand now?

It’s come good and I’m back on the bike now, but it put a bit of a spanner in my plans. I’ve been working a lot with Ben Townley and the injury meant it’s taken some time out of our plan.

Image: Simon Makker (Makkreative).

I saw that you’d been spending a bit of time with BT. How’s that been going?

It’s been awesome. Yarrive Konsky helped organise it for me and I’ve never had anyone in my corner and mentoring me like BT has been. I’ve worked with him for six weeks now and I’m just trying to take as much as I can from the experience, learn what I can and try to keep improving. I’d love for us to keep working together throughout the year – and in the years to come – and hopefully he’s happy to keep passing on his knowledge.

How much has competing in the New Zealand MX Nationals helped your form coming into the Australian race season?

It definitely provides a good base to build off of. No-one at home is racing at this level at the moment and all the guys here are fast. Like there are Kiwi guys here that if they carried their speed over to Australia, they’d be challenging for a championship. It also provides an advantage for the Aussie guys, because when they line up at round one, they’re just at another race. Sure there’ll still be some nerves, but nowhere near as many as if it was your first race of the year. And traditionally the guys who do well here in NZ bring really good form into the first few rounds of the MX Nationals back home.

Great stuff. Thanks for the chat! All the best for the final round at Taupo this weekend and for the 2017 race season.

Thanks mate, chat again soon!