Colt Nichols Interview: Birmingham Press Day
March 08, 2024
It's nice seeing you back. How you feeling?
It's good man. It's been a long time coming. I thought this was gonna happen weeks ago and it just hasn't. But no, I'm excited and I'm feeling good. My shoulder is more back to normal. I'd say we're at like the 90% part on the shoulder but feel strong enough. It's still a little weak, but strong enough where we feel like we can go compete and be competitive. So we'll see. Man, I'm excited though. The bike's made a lot of progress. I've made a lot of progress. So yeah, I'm just ready to get behind the gate and see where we're at.Any nerves for tomorrow?
Of course. Yeah, always nerves. Yeah, if we weren't nervous you'd have a problem. But I'm excited though. I feel confident and where we're at, you know, we're gonna learn a lot. I think we'll leave Sunday being like, okay, we're further off than we thought, or we're closer than we thought. But no matter what, there's definitely some nerves always.Do you think there's additional nerves coming off of an injury being halfway through the season as opposed to at A1? Or do you think it's less?
Yes and no. I mean less in a way because A1 is always just A1, but at the same time, this is my A1, you know, so coming off an injury is hard because you've been behind the eight ball while these guys are racing every weekend while I was sitting on the couch; you're coming in kind of at a disadvantage in a way. And everyone's in the midseason stride and like I said, this is my A1 and I gotta go through those growing pains with the first few races. So we're aware of that. Unfortunately, this isn’t my first time coming into a season injured, so I kind of know somewhat what to expect, but you never know until you get out there. So we'll see where we are tomorrow.Do you have expectations results-wise?
I feel like I know where my ability is and I've got good riding partners back at home to kind of see where my gauge is. But it's always so different when you line up. So yes, I have expectations for sure that I'll always put on myself. But at the same time, it's my first race; we'll see.I think a lot of people are gonna be talking about how you're coming off an injury, but it's also your first race on a new bike and new team. Do you think there's some growing pains to have with that as well that you're expecting?
Yeah, always. It can always feel like something during the week and on the weekend you get a completely different feel, you know, when you're pushing to that point and the track just gets broke down so much more. There's so many more guys out there at once, so everything is just different. I'm sure we'll leave and have some stuff we need to work on with myself and with the bike, kind of all the way around. But that's the whole point why I wanted to get back and kinda get into the swing and see where we are.Are you able to take advantage of some of the learnings that Bloss and Short had earlier in the season?
Oh, definitely. Yeah, the bikes pre-A1 to now is a completely different motorcycle; it’s night and day different. The things that Benny had to go through… selfishly it was great, like he got to go through a lot of the growing pains that I would've went through myself and that we got figured out. So luckily a lot of that stuff is behind us and now we can move forward with chassis and trying to get comfortability stuff out of it. And luckily that's what we're doing now, so it's good.What's your contract like? Is this one year or two year deal? Outdoors and everything?
Yeah, I'm here next year too. I don't know if we're doing the whole outdoor series; we're only gonna do selected rounds. And then do the SMX, so that's the plan as of now. But yeah, I'm just excited to build and see where we are and be on a bike for longer than six months. Last year I was on the Honda for a while, then went to the Kawisaki and now on the Beta all in one year. So I'm like, I just wanna be on a bike and get some experience and try and build something somewhere. It's a good thing.Is there a plan for you to do World Supercross?
As of now, no. No plans to do WSX. We'll see, I've talked to Adam Bailey a little bit about some stuff. It just depends all on these guys. If the opportunity was there: Sure. But my contracts for here: Beta USA. So that's completely up to Beta / the team.
