Slaw
Despite growing up just minutes from Washougal, the race has never treated Levi Kitchen great in his pro career.
After taking hold of the championship lead following Spring Creek, Kitchen entered his home event last Saturday with the red plate and a 25 point lead over Cole Davies.
But more troubled followed Kitchen. He was involved in a first-turn pileup in the first moto and came back to salvage sixth. Another bad start in the second moto left Kitchen with another sixth place finish. While he weathered through a tough afternoon at his home track with a 6-6 effort that placed him fifth overall, he is now only seven points clear of Davies entering the break after the New Zealander went 1-1.
After the race he talked about his tough starts and more.
You were dealt some tough cards at the beginning of your motos, but you did the best that you could and you made a lot of great passes. Walk us through your point of view.
Levi Kitchen: A lot of first turn crashes for me this year. I’m getting kind of tired of picking my bike up like that. But I don’t know; I did what I could. And then second moto, I just didn’t have much in me. I put a lot out there that first moto to try to get up there and I felt unreal. Then the second moto, I was trying to go where I was in the first one and it just wasn’t really working. So, I kind of got stuck in a not-so-great pace, but it’s okay. I’m pretty healthy and we get a little bit of a break, so that’ll be nice.
Take us through your battle with Julien in that second moto, because it really looked like you were going to get him and then didn’t happen.
Juju showed a lot of grit late motos too. I knew he was going to be good and I kind of could get to him, but I didn’t know where to get him, to be honest. I had a place picked out before the triple in the middle, and then last lap I went to go outside where I’d been going and there was a lapper there. Kind of ruined my chance. I thought maybe that’s where I could make it happen. But once you get past there, I don’t know if there was a pass made from there to the finish line today. It was tough, but just move forward.
We see your speed week in and week out, but it just seems like, like you said, it’s the starts. Obviously this isn’t a perfect world, but in a perfect world, if you could have one thing on your bike or with yourself to get out of that gate, what would help you get there?
Probably a 450.
So more horsepower?
More horsepower or maybe I need to stop eating. No, I need to get better at them. The second moto I went too high RPM and that there’s a real small window right now and I’m struggling with it. If I miss that window, I mean, the first start I thought was great last weekend. Top five is fine, but unfortunate circumstances, obviously. The second one, dude, I went little too high RPM. I had both feet off the back, wheelieing. It was horrible. So I would say maybe a start map if we could work on that. But I want to figure it out myself. I don’t really want to go down that road, to be honest.
Is it getting hard to stay in it with the start just because it feels like you can almost trust no one at this point? I mean, particularly the Star amateur kids, the rookies have been the biggest fault the last couple rounds, but it doesn’t seem to matter where you go. So does that start to affect you eventually with the start?
I can’t blame anybody. We’re first motos and they water the crap out of the first turn at every race we go to. So, I can’t get mad at the kids. They want to win, they want to show, they want to prove we were all there. It’s just a different feeling. You watch the 450 guys, they’re a little more patient. It’s just bad circumstances. I mean, I don’t even know what happened in the first one. I just saw somebody tuck and then of course me and one of my best friends, Pierce, it’s his first race back. And before the moto I’m like, “Come on dude, let’s go.” And then we’re fricking picking our bikes up off each other. I’m just like, “Damn it, dude.”
Washougal, kind of a love/hate relationship. I know you literally grew up down the street, but I know it’s not one of your favorite rounds, but you got everybody hyping you when you come to this race, all your friends and family. Is that a tough one too? Because it’s like everybody wants you to do good here, but I just know it’s not your favorite stop of the season.
Honestly, today was the most fun I’ve had here ever. I just think if I could have got up there, I just really wish I would’ve been able to at least ride with those guys up front. I think we would’ve had a pretty good race because I felt pretty good. It’s just the first one, I used up a lot of my fuel because I was just in a dog fight the whole time. And I literally went wide open for 30 minutes. Surprisingly, this is my best result here. We need to get a little better.
It’s funny you say this is your best result because I think RV struggled here for a long time as well. Is there definitely, there’s no home track advantage? And then second question, I saw fricking Fabio here and somebody said he’s a Kitchen family friend. Is that true?
Yeah. Fabio and my dad are really good friends. It’s pretty insane, but we were just over there talking and he’s awesome. He wants me to go down to LA because I really like my dream car is a GT3RS. And he’s like, “No, you got to get the GT2RS. They only made so…” He’s got the craziest stuff. So he’s a really good guy.
These first turn crashes, they’re putting in really hard charges, those first motos. Do you think that’s affecting you at all energy-wise going into these second motos?
Oh, 100%. The days that I’ve won before or won motos, you don’t use half of the energy, in my opinion. And I think others would agree. Those motos from the back, it’s just like what Haiden did today. It’s tough. You just can’t relax, but that’s a part of it.
Photos: octopi.media
