Catching Up With…Donovan Mitchell

bayodome

• February 18 2009
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Wandering around the pits in San Diego, we ran into Division Seven/Star Racing/Yamaha’s Donovan Mitchell.  The former pro racer is now Star’s go-to-guy for just about everything logistical.  Donovan took a few minutes to tell us about his role on the team, the outlook for the season, and his thoughts on the future of Star Racing.

What is you role on the Star Racing team?

After the off-season I got back into working with Star Racing/Yamaha again just helping with the managing and coordinating of the race team.  I’m dealing with all the logistics, sponsors, and all the day-to-day stuff as far as riders or whatever is needed to keep the program going.

I started with the team about five years ago with management and working with sponsors and I worked with the riders a bit.  Nowadays, the riders tend to have their own program.  I go out to the test track a little, but a lot of my work involves doing emails, phone calls, ordering parts, arranging hotels, and making sure everyone knows where they are supposed to be.

So you pretty much keep the team functioning?

Yeah, putting out fires a lot of the time (laughs).  Anything that comes up, such as people needing passes, if the team owner needs something; whatever it may be I’ll try to help out in any way that I can.

It seems like the team has stepped up this year.  The Yamaha support that was split between Yamaha of Troy and Star Racing has now been shifted entirely over to Star?

Yamaha stepped up big for us this year and we’re now established as the only factory Yamaha satellite Lites team.  It’s been really good for and was five years in the making.  We’ve been working really hard to gain that status and we’re glad to be there.  We are just wanting to get the results now, which so far are lacking.  I think we have the look now though; with the bikes as far as equipment goes it’s the best of the best.  We just need to get the results and that will put us in the forefront as being considered in the same light as a Pro Circuit- or Factory Connection-type team.

Although the team has been around for a while, you still have some young guys who have just moved up to the pro ranks and are not quite established yet.  At the same time, you also have a couple riders who have been around for a few years.

Well, Sean Collier stepped back in for us last minute after Broc Tickle got hurt.  But we started with Yamaha wanting us to have young up and coming guys and grow them into becoming the top professionals.  We are still involved with the young kids in that way; grooming them into young champions but there is going to come a time when we are going to try to attain the guys who are already legitimate contenders.  Obviously that is just going to take some time.  Hopefully next year you’ll see some top riders on our program, as well as some other guys.  We have Matt Lemoine (shown at left) in the East Coast Lites, and he was really fast over in Houston and we expect some really good things out of him in Atlanta.  Darryn Durham did very well in his first race at Houston as well.  He got a second place start, dropped to last after he was taken out in a crash, then worked his way back to eighth at the finish.  So this next weekend we’re really hoping to shine and expect some big things to come.

In talking about stepping up the program, is there any possibility of having a 450 part of the team?

Actually for the outdoors we just brought on a 450 rider from Brazil.  Its something we are just trying out.  His name is Lucas Moraes.  It’s going to fit the program and just add something extra.   He wanted to come over here and get into racing in the United States.  He’s the top rider in Brazil as far as their championships and he wanted to try the US circuit out so we arranged a deal.  So everything just got finalized in the last week and everyone can look forward to seeing him this summer.  We’ll see how it works out.

I think its good when teams look at foreign prospects as well, and not just in the States.

We’ve always been open as far as riders go.  If we don’t have a bike out on the track due to an injured rider, we like to give somebody a shot.  There are always young kids, and I’ve been there before myself.  There’s always going to be a guy who needs a shot and we can at least give him the opportunity to see what he can do on competitive machinery.