Red Bull KTM’s Julien Beaumer had an eventful night in Seattle, battling hard core throughout the main with Garrett Marchbanks for second, losing that battle and then engaging late in a fight for the final podium spot with Haiden Deegan, which matters a lot because Beaumer is second in points to Deegan.
You looked stronger in this race. Is your shoulder back to 100 percent?
The shoulder is better. I’d say riding I’m 100 percent, but strength-wise I’m still down, probably about 80 percent. I haven’t been able to do much gym work up until the last two weeks. We’re still building strength back, but other than that the shoulder is pretty good. I’ve been able to ride and everything.
Did it come into play late in this race?
I wouldn’t say so. I put it mainly on me. I never got tired, I just made a lot of mistakes. I really got caught up in lappers, and that was my fault. I got frustrated trying to get around lappers and got caught up in it. That was my issue.
You had some good battles in the main, you and Garrett Marchbanks were going back and forth quite a bit.
Yeah, we were. He and I are cool, we’re clean, we’re not going to throw down. We had a clean battle and he ended up getting the better of me in that main event. Then it obviously went a little down hill from there. I didn’t execute how I wanted to.
What’d you think of this track? Was it hard to go fast on it?
Yeah, it was really tough. The transitions were sticky and they almost sucked you down. It was a little bit of a struggle, and the timing of the jumps was a little weird, depending on how much they sucked you down, but that was about it.
There’s always a lot of talk about you being a west coast guy, and that you aren’t good in ruts. But tonight you looked fine in them.
Yeah [laughs], there’s a lot of talk about the ruts thing, but if you look back, in Arlington I was hurt, and Indy, I didn’t ride at all for two weeks before. And I still got eighth in the Showdown in one of the gnarliest races of the year. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t terrible. And obviously tonight my riding was really good. It was just execution.
