Bobby Jimenez
Summer 2007
Tell us a little about yourself……Well to start my name is Bobby Jimenez, I’m 18 years young. I’m a pretty simple guy from New Jersey. Motocross is a huge part of my life. I also love to go fishing. I ride as much as possible and train as hard as I can. Right now I’m living in Florida so I can ride and train all winter.
You and your Dad have been a fixture at the races in the Northeast for a number of years. Tell us about your racing career so far. So far my racing career has been pretty good. It’s had its good days along with its bad. My goal all through my childhood was to be a professional motocross rider. At the age of 17, I accomplished my goal.
Last fall you suffered some serious injuries after being landed on. Tell us about that. Yeah, that was a tough one! I’ve had some injuries before but this one was by far the worst. I was doing a little demo ride with a couple of other local guys and one of the people out there jumped a double that I rolled and he landed on me. I got flown out of the track. I spent about a week in trauma. And a couple of those days I was in a coma. I had severe swelling on my brain and I broke my jaw. I had my mouth wired shut for about 6 weeks. It was horrible. I don’t remember the crash or about a month after the crash, but I do know that there was a TON of support coming from everyone. But it’s all in the past now.
You spent part of this summer in Canada racing the Canadian National series. Tell us about that experience. Yeah, it was a pretty cool experience. I had a ton of fun. The tracks were a lot of fun, the people were super cool for the most part, the competition was tough. The hardest thing was at round one in Quebec EVERYTHING was French. Even the announcer was announcing the races in French. haha. Round two went the best. It started ALL wrong I brought one of my friends along for the ride. Andrew Flood, he probably has the worst luck I have ever seen. Well, he brought it with him. The weekend started out with us locking the trailer keys in the trailer at the border. When we got to the track we realized what happened, then we had to break in our own trailer. After we got the key situation situated Flood and I went driving looking for these cliffs to jump off into a lake that the kids up there were telling us about. The street signs were in French…And we got lost. We eventually made it back. Then practice went ok Saturday I felt a little bit off the pace but I was able to fix that for Sunday. I qualified in both mx1 and mx2 I was pretty stoked I finished 19-20-for 23rd overall in mx2 and 25-26 for I think 27th overall in mx1. I crashed on the start in moto 2 of the mx1 class. The last round was a disaster! The track was really cool, kinda sandy with some hard-packed sections. In practice Sunday morning I went down on one of the fastest sections of the track, it was a long sweeping right-hander. My front wheel washed out. I hurt my shoulder really bad. I rode my qualifier in a lot of pain but my lap times weren’t good enough so I had to go to the LCQ. After that, there was a HUGE misunderstanding or something because I was under the impression that I didn’t qualify so I headed home. But the week after the race a friend of mine brought it to my attention that I had two DNF’s on the results page. So I guess I did qualify. But I ended up something like 82nd in points in the nation and 43rd on the east coast in mx2. So I was stoked on that.
What was it like spending all of that time in a pickup truck driving to Canada with your Dad? It wasn’t too bad for me. The first time Dad was an animal, drove straight through, the only time he stopped was for gas. I, on the other hand, slept straight through that one. Sorry, Dad. The second round is when Andrew came with me, they split the driving at that time and again I slept a good portion of it. The last round was different. Pops was tired so I put a couple of hours in behind the wheel and let him sleep.
In your first season as a pro, you even scored a couple of points. How did that make you feel? That was an unbelievable feeling. I ended up 43rd in the east coast points and 82nd in the national points. It was definitely a huge confidence builder.
As we conduct this interview you are actually living in Florida getting ready for next season. Tell us about your program for this winter. Every day I either go for a pretty long mountain bike ride usually somewhere around 20 miles or I go running. I do a lot of sprints and also some core exercises, and I try to throw some soccer in with my workouts sometimes. I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I ride Tuesdays and Thursdays, and also on weekends. I’m planning on doing a couple of races down here as well.
Who is helping you out while living down there? I’m living with some pretty good friends. The Garcia Family. They are helping me out a ton with a place to live and they even feed me! I can’t thank them enough. My Dad is also helping me out tremendously.
What are your plans for next season? I plan to go back up to Canada and Qualify for every east coast round and Place a lot higher in the points. My Dad and I were also talking about getting my Pro card for the states as well. So if I do that I will try to run a couple of nationals that are closer to home.
Who would you like to thank for helping you out?
Well first off I would like to thank my Dad. He has been behind me 100% since day one and I can’t thank him enough. If it wasn’t for him racing motocross wouldn’t even be an option for me. I would also like to thank Freehold Honda, Dragon, Troy Lee Designs, Decal Works and Bel-Ray, And a special thanks to Scott Lukaitis for hooking me up with all the right people that he hooks me up with. And everyone else who has helped me through the years
