Steve Dixon Interview

Steve Dixon the owner and manager of the Bike It Yamaha Cosworth team is very much a passionate guy. There are not too many privateer teams inside the Grand Prix paddock that have had the success Dixon’s team has had in Grand Prix racing.

Of course nearly two weeks ago Dixon rider Max Anstie scored his first ever Grand Prix victory with a win at the Grand Prix of Belgium. Held at the toughest circuit in the world (Lommel) Anstie had a stunning victory and sent champagne spraying into the Belgian air as Dixon and Anstie celebrated on the podium.

We talk to Dixon about the troubles of 2014 and the victory in Lommel.

Q: Steve, can you name the riders who have had success in the MX2 class with you?

Dixon: From memory we have given Paul Malin, Carl Nunn, Billy Mackenzie, Andrew McFarlane, Zach Osborne, Dean Ferris and Max Anstie all having their first ever GP victory in the MX2 class, and for many of those guys their first ever GP win in any class.

Q: What has been the problem with the bike this year, because you have had a lot of mechanical failures and that isn’t really your style.

Dixon: We are known for producing good 250’s and we started the 2014 season with the 2013 bike, because the 14 bikes arrived late. I mean the standard Yamaha 250 is an awesome bike and for the customer it’s great, but we have to race against full factory bikes from KTM, and Kawasaki and Yamaha, so we need to do stuff to the bike to get to that level. To develop a bike it takes time and the season started early and was overseas and that cost us time. It’s just been an up-hill slog and it takes time to get the bike like we had it last year, and now we are achieving that. We have had issues, but that is because we are testing at the races, and it’s not my style to push the bike back to the paddock, but it is what it is, and we had our other team rider racing on a slightly less tuned bike than Max and he hasn’t had any problems.

Q: How has Max been about all the failures?

Dixon: After some failures we sat down with Max and he said let us just build for 2015. He said he wanted a bike like he had for the first three races this year, and he said he knows if he has a good bike he can compete at the top and go for wins, and be where we were at the start of the season. We are still a long way from where we want to be, but as everyone saw in Lommel, the bike was great. To finish on a normal bike in Lommel is something special and we are still ironing out some gremlins.

Q: Max seems like a pretty chilled out guy at the races despite all the problems.

Dixon: I must say this, to all the teams, Max has been fantastic this year, and if he had a failure he was always the true professional. He hasn’t thrown the bike down or anything like that. He has shown me that he is working as a team and he knows everyone is working hard to help get the situation right.

Q: What happened on the start-line when he couldn’t start the bike?

Dixon: Basically after the sighting lap Max had an issue with the feeling of the throttle on the sighting lap and he was revving it and flooded the engine. You have to start an engine in a special way after flooding it, and you will see mechanics can start a bike straight away, but because the gate is going to drop the rider gets flustered, which is understandable.

Q: You got the GP win anyway, what is that like?

Dixon: There is no better feeling. I mean my first GP win with Paul Malin will always be special, but to win after all the trouble we have had was just brilliant. Max deserves this type of success, so I was really happy for him.