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PULLEY
David Pulley is living the privateer dream, traveling What do you remember about showing up to the
from coast to coast as a competitor in Monster Energy Supercross. You can catch the Californian rocking his LS2 Subverter MX470 at any supercross near you, sharing a track with the world’s best in one of the most demanding sports in the world of motorcycle racing. Pulley has been riding for over fifteen years, first discovering his love of two wheels at the age of nine. He quickly caught the racing bug and began chasing the dream, contesting his first major race at the World Mini Grand Prix in Las Vegas in 2003. The Califor- nian spent multiple years as a successful amateur racer which culminated in a Loretta Lynn’s Amateur Motocross Championship in 2010. He has since finished top five in the AX Lites Championship back
in 2012 and has qualified for multiple Monster Energy Supercross night shows in both the 250SX and 450SX divisions. Pulley inked a deal with LS2 for the 2018 SX season and contested sixteen out of seventeen rounds in the premier class, bringing the LS2 name to the big stage. We caught up with David to chat about his history as an amateur, racing supercross in India, and his plans for the 2019 supercross season.
What sparked your interest in motorcycles to begin with? It was actually pretty crazy -- my dad
raced jet skis professionally for Yamaha when I was younger and I wanted to do that, but unfortunately back then you had to be sixteen to start racing. So I just kind of randomly got the interest to get a dirt bike and we started riding out here at Elsinore at our local track. I had a lot of fun with it so I asked him to go do a race. It’s really funny -- my first race was the World Mini Grand Prix, but because he was just a full time jet ski guy, both of us had no idea...I just kind of found it online and I was like “Hey, can we go do this race
in Vegas?” So it was kind of an eye opener for us, but that was the first big, real race that I ever did. I did some local, small stuff in Rosarita Beach where my dad used to train for surf stuff in Mexico, so that was like our real first race. Surprisingly, I didn’t do terrible and I just had so much fun doing it, so I knew it was what I wanted to do.
Do you still keep up with the jet skiing for cross training and that sort of thing? Yeah, I ride stand-
ups and these Yamaha blasters a lot out here. I used to ride a lot when I was younger -- we had a track at our house and stuff where we lived out on the lake where my dad would train. I would ride with my dad and all the pro guys on my little stand-up and kind of hang with them, so they thought I was going to be some top jet ski dude and I ended up going to dirt bikes.
World Mini Grand Prix and that whole experi- ence as your first big race? It was a huge eye opener. It’s funny ‘cause my dad didn’t really want to ask Yamaha to get me a bike unless he knew I really wanted to do it, so his friend had this 1990 YZ80 and got it all fresh. So, I raced the 2003 World Minis on a 1990 YZ80 against all the 85s and stuff -- everyone was on brand new bikes and on the way there I was like “Dad, if I win the race can I get a new bike?” and he was like “Yeah, sure.” We show up and see the lines and lines of RVs and rigs and both of our eyes are just huge -- he says “You just make it through this weekend and we’ll get you some new bikes.” It was pretty crazy, but it was really cool. They brought me up into the announcers tower and they didn’t realize that we kind of had no idea what we were getting into. Thousand Oaks Yamaha or someone who was there gave us a little goodie bag with all this stuff, so it was really cool. I guess that’s kind of what really got me into the love of the sport and enjoying the racing side of it.
What was the majority of your amateur career like? Did you do all of the big races or kind of take things year by year? I was doing quite a bit of traveling when I was younger. I did Ponca and all that stuff and we went out to Michigan for this mini mafia race. I did quite a bit, especially on 85s I would say -- I was definitely a pretty solid 85 rider and then on big bikes I really didn’t stand out too much. I rode pretty well the last few years on big bikes, but I didn’t really to try hit every single race and stuff like that. We just did the ones that we could afford and that we thought would be good exposure at the time. I was really known a lot for doing local races, too -- I’d show up to local races and kill it and back in the day -- there were a couple magazines that I was in from races at Perris and Elsinore.
The 2018 SX season just wrapped up with the last round in Vegas. You contested 450SX class this year, how did things go from your perspec- tive? It really wasn’t the year that I wanted results wise. We switched to a new bike this year and it felt really good during pre-season stuff, but then we had some suspension issues and little things with the bike (since we didn’t have much time on it) that we didn’t see the issues we’d be having as the season went on. I had more bike malfunctions than I would have liked, but I’m definitely riding better. Everyone is at a really high level right now and everyone is really close -- especially in the 450 class. The one race that I got
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