Monster Vitality/Professional Circuit Kawasaki’s Jo Shimoda returned to racing this weekend after breaking his collarbone on the finish of January earlier this yr simply earlier than 250SX East Area was about to start out. Shimoda anticipated to issue within the championship combat alongside Hunter Lawrence this season, however he as an alternative spent two months on the sidelines recovering. Even with no championship to combat for, he nonetheless returned to supercross to present it a go for the ultimate 4 rounds and get some much-needed gate drops.
He would find yourself fourth on the day at Atlanta after going quickest in free apply and crashing on the primary lap of his warmth race. His focus is on the AMA Professional Motocross Championship, however he has not raced because the 2022 Professional Motocross finale. Beginning at an enormous speedway after which rolling proper right into a Dave Coombs Sr. East/West Showdown subsequent weekend isn’t ultimate for Shimoda, however these gate drops had been too necessary to overlook. We spoke with him afterwards about it.
Racer X: It was your 2023 season debut, discuss us via every little thing this weekend.
Jo Shimoda: I used to be excessive on the nerves as we speak. I haven’t raced for half a yr, so it was somewhat bit hectic at first however I’m simply pleased with not making tremendous dumb selections and get via today. I simply should construct this confidence, you understand? It doesn’t are available one second, so it’s important to go race by race. My major objective is for outdoor. My objective is to have a stronger mindset for outdoor and hopefully try this.
Such as you talked about with outdoor, you’ve in all probability been using a whole lot of outdoor, simply sort of preparing for that championship. Not that you simply had been going to skip supercross however that in all probability helped you with the lap occasions being so lengthy as we speak and extra of a brutal monitor versus a decent supercross monitor. What was that like?
Truthfully, folks say it’s a half and half monitor, however using with supercross suspension… I don’t go trip supercross suspension on an outside monitor, so I used to be extra ready for a standard sort of supercross. It’s simply a lot totally different. It’s onerous to trip your one hundred pc when it feels somewhat uncomfortable otherwise you didn’t have this race mindset for some time. I struggled with that however race by race I feel it must be higher and higher.
