We talk to 2019 MX Nationals MXD Champion Regan Duffy about his Raceline KTM 250SX-F.
The Rider: Regan Duffy
Winning the MXD title is pretty much what I set out to do this season. The last two years of my Junior career I had that goal in mind, of winning MXD as soon I stepped up to Seniors. I was happy to get that done.
I have to give a shout out to my dad, Ross Beaton, and all my team for helping me to do that. It was unreal. I had the goal to win MXD from about the age of 15, but [the goal of] winning Manjimup was from when I was probably four, so that was a dream come true.
There hasn’t been a feeling like it. I did it in a pretty bizarre way. I went down with my teammate, Hayden Mellross, in the first turn. From there, I went from last to third before passing two riders on the last lap to get the overall win. It was crazy. I had the whole crowd cheering me on and I could hear my name being yelled while I was racing.
There is nothing like Manjimup. I haven’t been to a race ever with the same sort of crowd and atmosphere. There hasn’t been a WA rider win it since the 1990s I think, so I had the whole bloody place going for me. I don’t think I have a specific favourite thing about the KTM 250SX-F, but I’d have to say it is the team that comes with that bike.
We’ve had a sick year and they are pretty much family now. I can’t thank John Tisdale, Chris Woods, my mechanic Shaun and the other mechanic, Josh, enough. If you ask the team, they’d probably say I’m useless at testing. I just go out there and I can’t pick up on changes or anything.
I just ride it and adapt to it. I wouldn’t say there is anything specific I look for. I’m hoping to move up to MX2 next year and have a crack at that. Before that, I’ve got supercross. I have no expectations there; I just want to get through safe. Hopefully
I’ll have a real good pre-season before stepping up to give 100% and do my best.
The Manager: Chris Woods
We had a lot of big changes this year and started a new store in Queensland, which is where the [Raceline Performance] race team is based. It was all hands on deck at the start of the season, so to reward everyone for their hard work and get a championship was pretty good. The 250SX-F gives us a good platform to build off. Anyone can buy it off the shelf, but it’s a race bike. So it’s really just putting the pieces where Regan wants them. He is quite a tall kid and a free-flowing kid, so he just likes to keep momentum.
We try and build a top-end sort of bike for him, so once he’s got that momentum, he is up and running. And, of course, when we go to some tighter tracks, we customise it for that. But the platform is the best thing about the KTM. It’s a race bike with all the good components, straight out of the box.
As I said, he likes momentum, and we found ourselves going harder and harder with the fork. We basically wanted a bike that holds up but follows the deck quite well on all the twitchy little bumps. He likes a nice, positive front-end, so when he’s charging into stuff, it just soaks it all up. He’s learnt a lot this year. He’s always been that kid who is lightning fast and we’ve been watching that as he’s been coming through. But he did happen to have a couple of little brain snaps and he’d either win by 30 seconds, or he’d be on the deck.
This year, we knew he was going to be something special, so we set him up with our head mechanic, Shaun, to try and calm him down and give him every opportunity we could. That was his biggest hurdle to overcome and he did it. He has absolutely smoothed out, and he realised he didn’t have to win every time to win the war. Having a WA rider on the team can be expensive but, in saying that, they have a good network of KTM dealers over there, so if he breaks some parts, he can get bits from them and then we’ll send stuff straight to them to replace the stock. The testing budget is definitely a little higher this year, but then again, last year wasn’t much difference; Mitch [Evans] was from Cairns. with Dylan Ruddy
5 things you didn’t know about Regan Duffy
1 Regan is a four-time Australian Junior Motocross Champion.
2 He is from Woodvale, a suburb of Perth.
3 He has aspirations to race in Europe, like his Raceline predecessor Mitch Evans, but is focused on doing his best in the Australian nationals for the next year at least.
4 Raceline Performance is a workshop in NSW, with a Queensland shop added this year. They run the Raceline KTM team which has riders in all three classes of the MX Nats.
5 Regan this year became the youngest winner of the Manjimup 15,000.