JANUARY 24, 2007
Brady Sheren gets some advice during practice at A2. By Danny Brault When we posted the breaking news about Brady Sheren moving to Ryan Clark's Team Solitaire for this weekend, we had no idea that the story would soon explode into one of the biggest news stories of the week. The 18 year old British Columbia resident made his way onto the WWR team (which is designed to nurture privateers to the point where they can land a factory-supported ride) following their tryout process back in the fall. Well, just three rounds into the AMA Supercross Series, Sheren has already made an exit from the team. Initial word was that he was basically fired, but that hasn’t been the case according to WWR’s Scott Kandel and Dana Kellstrom. We caught up with the two to find out what exactly happened with Sheren.
Photos by Allison Kennedy
RXC: So, what exactly happened between Brady and the Wonder Warthog team?
Dana: First off, I like Brady very, very much. He’s friends with my kid. Brady’s an awesome kid; he’s intelligent. All that transpired was ... based on what Brady had set forth as his goals and told the team, from day one, he was not meeting anywhere close to those expectations he said he would do. All we did, was ask him to ride in Hog Haven this weekend, which is basically one team lower on the team structure. When asked, he said he didn’t want to do that or he will get back to us. This was on Sunday. Much to Brady’s credit, what thoroughly impresses me—because in life you have to be a problem solver—he went out and apparently got his own deal and that was half of what we wanted for him anyways. By three o’clock on Monday, he called me back and said, “Dana, don’t worry about getting me set up for Hog Haven; I’ve got my own ride.” We’re still paying his entry fees and we’re still supporting him; the team is still 100 percent behind Brady. He probably didn’t want to ride out of Hog Haven, even though our Hog Haven part of our team is exactly what it’s supposed to be. But all of those guys have been told—they were at the intern tryouts too—if they were doing better, posting better lap times—we’ve had kids back there making the mains. We have kids doing better than Brady is doing, so at the end of the day, don’t think that none of those kids and their families don’t want to move up. They call the team everyday. I sat down with Brady and all of the interns, way before Anaheim 1 and we discussed all of this, how someone can move up. The standards the interns set for themselves were at the very minimum, main events. Maybe those standards were a little unrealistic but, they also said there was no way in the world, in the selection process, that the Hog Haven riders should be doing better than them.
Was that Brady’s goal, to simply make main events or did he have even higher goals?
Dana: He had higher goals than that. He told the team that this was his breakout year and that he used to run with Villopoto and Alessi at Loretta’s and he’s used to what it’s like on the podium. Brady’s goal was to be inside the top ten. There’s no denying the fact that he barely made the night show, even with the new qualifying system. He was 38th fastest at Phoenix, 30th at Anaheim. Brady can continue to practice every week, like everyone else, he still has track access that I pay for. We’re not booting him off.
So, simply, he didn’t meet his goals, you had the Hog Haven guys who were making main events and you put him onto the farm team and moved one of those guys up.
Dana:Yeah, but it’s like anything else, a seventeen or eighteen-year-old kid and probably said, "Well that’s not good enough." It’s no different than a job, some people get raises and some people get reductions. We’re still not kicking him to the curb; he’s still welcome to use the tracks, we’ve paid his entry fees for the rest of the year and we still want to see him have success.
Scott: And he does get a lot of credit for pulling together a deal, like Dana said, he did that in record in time. That’s a credit to how resourceful and smart Brady is.
Dana: I would love to have Brady come work for my company because he’s a smart kid. The thing about it is that supercross is the highest level and it might be unrealistic. It’s like selling someone a bill of goods and then not delivering them.
Okay, well that sounds much more reasonable than the first story we heard, that he was basically taken off the team.
If he had just said, okay, great, I will just ride out of Hog Haven, we would have worked out what we needed to work out—make sure he has a bike and everything—so he could race San Francisco.
Just back tracking a little bit, when you guys had your tryouts for the WWR team, what made you decide to choose Brady?
Dana: The hard part was that there were twenty kids who qualified. When I say “all qualified,” obviously some were a little faster, but some had other attributes. One of Brady’s strong suits, is that he’s an extremely intelligent kid—well spoken and articulate. Part of the spirit of the program, is to help kids with life skills. If Brady wasn’t going to make a living at this level, giving him the opportunity to do it now and figuring out what to do in business, would still be helping a privateer. If we just picked one guy, which was our original plan—one for the West and one for the East—we picked three completely different characterisiics of people. We figured we would go with a massive effort, because we didn’t know how this would turn out.
Scott: That is a point. As a first year program, we were working out a framework and obviously, you need to make some tweaks along the way. We didn’t know what the future would hold from day one, so we did our best of balacing out the characteristics of the kids. One was speed, potential results, attitude and how well the kids carry themselves and Brady made a lot of points in that second area. That counted a lot for Brady getting into the system to begin with. Like Dana said, we increased the number of spots from two to six and we worked hard to make room for Brady.
When you chose Brady, did you take into consideration his marketability, with him being the only Canadian on the team?
Dana: Not really, because the thing is, everyone is just people. I don’t think that came into play at all.
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The Wonder Warthog Racing pits at Anaheim 2. |
There was also word that you had troubles with bikes and sponsors coming together at the last minute.
Dana: What happened, being a first year team, that … First off, it goes a bit deeper than that. Brady has always had a bike to ride and he’s always been practicing, ever since October or November. Yamaha didn’t get their bikes—it didn’t matter if it was Star Racing or Yamaha of Troy—they didn’t get their bikes until the beginning of December. To make a long story short, Brady had been on a bike all during October, November, and at the beginning of December we got bikes from Yamaha. The following weekend, we got Brady a practice bike and we were out there doing the suspension for him. He had probably two or three weeks on the Yamaha before Anaheim. Then the race bike, which MDK was building the motors—you can imagine how swamped [they would be] before A1. Trust me, it was a monumental effort on twenty-five guys part to get to Anaheim 1. The week before, we spent time with Brady working on his race bike, getting it set up for him. In a perfect world, I wish we were Pro Circuit—get our bikes in September, and go testing in October.
Scott: If you contrast it, you have Ryan Grantom, who didn’t get his bike until after A1 and he had a race bike and practice bike. He came out to Phoenix, basically his first time on his practice bike, and he makes the main. Race bikes aren’t bikes you spend a ton of time on anyway. And Ryan is a Hog Haven guy.
Dana: I hope it works out for Brady. I would love to see him go out this weekend and kick everybody’s ass, but nobody is upset at him. He didn’t do anything wrong; he didn’t do anything bad. He just isn’t performing to the level he set forth, and what he sold the team. If Brady was on the other side of the track, he would be the first guy saying, “Hey, Dana, see my results? Put me on the front side.” I know Brady, and his dad would be calling me saying, Brady made the main, move him up.
It must have been a tough decision.
Dana: The thing about it, is that he can move back up. He just happened to find a better ride.
Okay, guys, I will let you go. It was great chatting with you and good luck this weekend in San Francisco.
Thanks.
