Vince Friese Talks Abu Dhabi GP

Oh, boy. Lots of Vince Friese talk coming out of Abu Dhabi, the second round of the FIM World Supercross Championship.

Riders were not stoked with Friese for his takeouts and just his riding in general. After the race, Friese was penalized two positions for “dangerous racing” in the first race (he block passed Dean Wilson hard for the lead, knocking Wilson down) and two more in the final race, when Savatgy block passed him off the track, and Friese rode down the side of the track and retook the position.

You can see the Wilson pass below.

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Well, after the race some words were exchanged, with Friese calling Wilson a whiner. It was all very entertaining.

Anyway, Friese spoke about the incidents in the post-race press conference. Here’s what he had to say.

Third overall, Vince Frise, MotoConcepts, MCR Honda. Vince, there’s been some good riding from you this week and all throughout the day, the heat race, great starts. You put yourself right up front. But there were one or two interesting battles out on the track. How do you see it from your position because obviously everyone’s gonna be watching the race and talking about the race and things like that. How do you see it from your side?
Vince Friese: Yeah, I mean, I think if you put a bunch of money on the line like we have here and put us on an arenacross track, I think that’s the way it’s gonna go, at least for me that’s how I make a living. I’m not here to just ride around and have fun. I’m here to make some money and pay my bills. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re battling for position and if these guys wanna take it easy, they can take it easy, but I’m gonna race hard.

How did you see the incident in the, in the last race where Joey came up the inside of you and you ran off track. Did you think actually maybe I should have given the place back or not? [Friese was bumped off the track but passed Savatgy by skipping the next turn.] Or because obviously it did work out in your favor in the and you were classified still with third overall. So there were no penalties even though there was a long delay for a possibility of one.
Yeah, honestly, I don’t know what happened. If I get a penalty for it or not or whatever, I just know I got the third overall. But I mean, it is what it is. If it was wrong, then I’ll take the penalty. I’ve read through the rulebook, but it’s been a while. Round one was three or four months ago. So maybe I’ll give the rulebook another read through. Yeah, it’s hard to say if my front wheel was ahead of his or not. But I tried to just ride slowly but I cut a portion of the corner off, and I think in my head, I was like, “What do I, what do I do here? What do I do? Just go?” They’d already told me there was another penalty. So, at that point I was just, whatever, let’s just race dirt bikes at this point. Whatever. I mean, that’s the kind of racing I enjoy. I hate to take a position that’s not mine and if it’s wrong I’ll take the penalty for that. But I don’t know if there’s a penalty for the pass on Dean, but I felt like that was just good old motocross racing.

Final round is in Australia in a few weeks. Are you looking forward to that one now?
Absolutely. I love the dirt there. I love the track and the stadium and everything. I like to open it up a little bit, the tight ones [track] are tough. The guys with a lot of talent, seem to excel when the track gets tight and technical like this. So, I was able to hang in there with starts and obviously some aggressive riding. But yeah, when the track opens up a little bit, I seem to do a little better.