“Everything in life is preparation for the future,” said Max Anstie, who has followed a long and winding road to get back to where he should have been a dozen years ago. Max was once a teenaged prospect for Star Racing Yamaha, but that deal fizzled and he ended up back home in Europe for years. Supercross and the 250 class were probably well off his radar. The last two seasons have been a revelation, and now the 31-year-old Brit might just be the 250SX East favorite, especially after capturing round one in Tampa.
“It [the last two seasons in 250SX] definitely helped, but also coming into this season, if you spent too much time looking at the entry list, you were like 'Jeez, there's a lot of race winners and a lot of very fast guys.' Back when I was in Europe watching these guys race supercross, it was the dream. I'm locked in to where I'm here now, I'm on Star, I'm living the dream. It is pretty cool putting my team shirt on and coming to the track today. It was like, ‘Alright, I've made it.’ I've gotta go and do my work and execute, but everything in my life, whether it's GPs and everything else, it’s all built to this. I have a lot of admiration for these kids that are 18 and 19 and doing the things that I've always wanted to do. It's taken me a little longer to get to this point, but honestly it doesn't matter if you if you're 18, you've still got to race me now and it doesn't matter at the end of the year whose name is on that trophy. I don't care how old I am. I literally feel like I'm in a better position body wise, a better position mentally than what I've ever been in and man, yeah, I'd love to have been in this position when I was 17-18 years old, but I'm not, I'm here now.”
On his new team, he gets to soak up a lot of info.
“You’re with a bunch of kids, they’re keeping me young and but also on track, you know, the creativeness of Dax [Bennick, teammate] and some of the guys I get to see and learn and also be around, champions, Cooper Webb, Justin Cooper, Eli Tomac was there in December, Deegan, all these guys are race winners and champions.”
Early in Tampa, nearly the entire Yamaha team was executing, as Anstie and teammates Pierce Brown and Dax Bennick threatened a podium sweep (only Nate Thrasher had his trouble, getting knocked down early in a battle with Max Vohland). Brown was ripping early and pulled a small gap, then Anstie started to close. Brown then crashed hard in the whoops, a scary sight, and the race was red flagged.
“I had a front row seat, I was right there when he went down,” said Anstie. “They red flagged it and he didn’t get up the next lap. It took the wind out of my sails, you don’t want to see a teammate go down. Then we had ten minutes there, so I was just thinking “What are we going to do in the whoops?” I know at round one crazy things happen. After the red flag it was just hit my marks and hit my marks, don’t get too sendy in them.”
While drama was busting out in so many ways in Tampa, Anstie stayed clear of it all. He topped qualifying and his heat, and then the main.
“This was the most uneventful day for me as far as changes,” he said. “We did our homework. I've obviously got a proven team and a great team and, and you never really know in the offseason, but coming into this race, I literally did one click, that was it. One click softer just to help it out and not be quite slippery. They asked me, is there anything you want to change? And yeah, previous years I'm always like, ‘Right, I'm feeling this, let's go this direction or that direction.’ “
Chaos tends to show up for everyone at some point, and now a lot of top contenders in the east will have to hope that’s the case for Anstie, because the likes of Levi Kitchen (ninth) and RJ Hampshire (18th) are starting in a hole. Anstie's goal is simple: keep it simple.
“Moving forward into next week it's just keep executing starts and keep business as usual," he said. "I wanna be in this for the whole thing. This is check number one, it's good, let's move on to try and see what that brings us.”
