Jason Lawrence has had two supercross seasons and one outdoor season filled with controversy. Love him or hate him, when he showed up at Daytona on a 450 and led for the majority of the main event, he shut down a lot of talk. He's on a 450 for the Outdoors, and we caught up with him Friday afternoon at Glen Helen, just one day away from the opening round of the 2009 Outdoor season.Pete Peterson: You had a pretty rough supercross season with a lot of controversy. For how long have you been looking forward to the outdoors and a fresh start, and when did you start getting ready?Jason Lawrence: I haven't really been looking forward to them. I've known they've been coming up, but I've been having fun racing supercross, doing cool new things, getting to ride the 450, it was an awesome year for me. I haven't really been looking forward to supercross being over with, but I'm happy to be here for sure. I've been riding for a little bit, I'm comfortable on the 450, I've had some time back East to ride it.PP: Do you do anything different for your training for the outdoors as opposed to supercross?JL: Not really, I just ride. The only thing I do different to get ready for supercross is I ride supercross and for outdoors I ride outdoors.PP: You jumped on the 450 for supercross and you did great immediately. How long have you been riding 450s during your 250F career?JL: I rode 450s for a couple months back in '04 to do amateur stuff for Loretta's, but that's really it. I've been riding and racing 250F's solidly since '05. So it's kinda of a new thing but it's super fun.PP: Did it feel natural right away or was there a learning curve?JL: It's pretty natural. I mean, it's still a dirt bike. Actually it's a little easier to ride because you don't have to struggle to do any jumps, you just use the bike to your advantage.PP: What are you goals for round one and for the outdoor series?JL: This race, I want to do top five, have a bunch of points because Tuesday I had that crash and I'm just pumped to be able to ride. I'm pretty positive, but I feel like I'm... not really injured but I'm not 100% right now. So I want to get through this one and go into Hangtown with a bunch of points.PP: Tell me about the crash on Tuesday, where did that take place?JL: I was riding out here at Glen Helen and I just crashed, one of the dumbest crashes I've had. It was in a slow corner but I just caught my stomach on the foot peg real hard. After that I was just laying there trying to get my breath back for what seemed like the longest time I've ever had that happen to me. So it was shady, it was a really bad experience. I mean, that happens every once in a while and kind of reminds you what you're doing.
