James Ellison raced MotoGP this season but will race US Superbike in '07. image by wizard hat

It's not often that a MotoGP rider goes directly from the world's premier class of motorcycle roadracing to America's premier class of motorcycle roadracing.

A. I am a world champion. I won the Endurance World Championship.

Q. "Never doubt John Mockett" is a phrase I live by.

A. Who is ...

Q. Mockett—he draws Sprocket—the motorcycle race cartoon.

A. Okay, yeah, he's great.

Q. You raced MotoGP this year for the Tech 3 Yamaha team. What was that like?

A. It was great as long as I used the old chassis. We started the pre-season on the old chassis, then we got updated bikes and then, pretty much, it fell apart. I just could not get the new chassis to work. It was horrible, really.

Ellison moves to the Corona Honda Superbike team for '07. image by wolf j adams

Q. Were all of the Yamaha riders on the same chassis?

A. I don't think so. There was the '05 chassis, then the '06 chassis, which I think was universally disliked, then obviously Valentino and Colin got updated chassis pretty quickly, which helped. I never got an updated chassis.

Q. Where did the chassis not work?

A. Everywhere, but entry into the corner was my problem with it.

Q. Did you share info with the factory team? Ever talk to Colin or Valentino or did the difference in tire brands (Ellison used Dunlop tires) make discussion moot?

A. I did talk to Colin and Valentino as the season went on and we did trade some info, in terms of each telling what the bike was doing for each of us. I should probably keep those conversations private, but, we weren't saying anything the others hadn't experienced. For the factory team to do as well as they did this year was amazing, as far as I am concerned.

Q. Carlos Checa, your teammate, he seemed to be struggling as well, but his results did improve as the season ended.

A. He also received a new chassis.

Once he starts doing well, there's no point trying to help me, because they've got Yamaha up there—they've got three Yamahas up there—and they've got Dunlop up there. So what's the point in putting a lot of money into me to make me another frame? It's not like they're going to pick a frame off the shelf. They have to make it fit the engine. So what's the point to spend all that money when there's 800s coming out next year, and we've already got the guy, and we can just let him carry on and people will think it's him?

Which everybody does. And it's not me. And the team know that. And the Japanese Yamaha guys apologized to me at the end of the season, after the race. Straightaway after the race, came over to me, shook my hand, thanked me for the year, and I said, "Thank you. Sorry the results weren't there. They're not what you expected, or what I expected." And the guy shook his head, and said, "No, no. We're sorry that we didn't help you, that Yamaha didn't help you." I was pretty shocked. I'm glad he said it when he did, because my mum was there, and a couple of sponsors were there, and obviously the team manager was there, so they could hear that they have actually admitted it now. But it's just not nice to actually hide that from me all year, and kind of blame me, and I'm out there busting my balls, and they know that it's not going to go any quicker.

Ellison struggled in '06 on the Tech Three Yamaha because of chassis woes. Here he laps with former world champion Val Rossi. image by wolf j

Q What was life like in MotoGP for you, aside from that?

A It was good. There's a lot of good people. I made a lot of good friends there. It was a bit daunting at first, because I'd kind of grown up in the World Superbike paddock, or BSB. So I didn't really have many friends there, but a couple of really good friends who I'd taken over from the WCM team. Two mechanics from the WCM team. One ended up being the data guy, and the other ended up being the guy that helps me with the helmets and the sponsors and all that kind of stuff, and just traveled around with me and is just a friend, basically. Someone, a familiar face, I can talk to. So that was pretty cool in that respect. It was very busy. Very tiring. I didn't get to spend any time at home at all. Just traveling. Just on the road. On the road. Working, PR, testing, racing airports, hotels, paddock. That's it. There's not much of a life outside that.

Q How would you describe your riding style? What were your influences? Did you come up through 250s?

A No, no. I've always come through more or less Superstock bikes. It's just my style. I'd say that I am smooth. I'm not really aggressive on the brakes. I'm fairly late on the brakes, but not aggressive. I kind of roll the throttle off and then grab the brakes, so everything's just more smooth and more precise. I've been told on the Yamaha I have exactly the same style as Valentino - the lines, everything. The way I use the throttle, the way I use the brake, the front brake, how he releases it when he releases the clutch - everything was identical. So if we ever had a problem, we were always looking at his settings, because I had the same kind of style, whereas Carlos was very aggressive on the brakes. Very fast into the corner.

Q Point and shoot?

A Yeah. He looks pretty quick. Even on the WCM I always used to ride Valentino's lines, which are very tight. I'm not like a big sweeping person. Everything's always apexing early and getting out of the corner fast.

Q What were you doing four years ago?

A In 2002 I was riding for the factory Kawasaki team in World Supersport. 600. Not a good year.

Q You rode for two teams in World Supersport, right?

A No, just the one. Just Kawasaki. I won the Superstock championship back to back two years, 2000 and 2001, and that landed me a ride with Kawasaki in 2002. But I'd never really ridden 600s before, and I just couldn't get on with it. The guys are so fast in there, you just have to be on the pace. I wasn't that far off. My teammate was the World Champion. I was never more than half a second to seven tenths off him. But that is like five or six places in World Supersport. So I did have a good year with lap times and stuff like that, but on paper it doesn't look very good, when you look too far down. So I ended up going back to Superstocks after that.

Q What were your early racing days like?

"The amount of support I've had is unbelievable, from the word go. I don't know what it was, but people just seemed to want to help. Whenever we were stuck, people were always ready to chuck money in, to buy a flight, or buy another bike, or whatever, and it's enabled us to get to where I am now."

A MBX80. I've still got it. I bought it back a couple of years ago. Stripped it down and painted the frame, polished it all up. 120 pound, it cost me. I had a little dirt bike, a motocross bike. I just messed about in the fields. Never raced it. That was a Christmas present from my mum and dad. Then I decided to get into roadracing - me and my cousin decided to do it. Actually I wanted to do motocross. I was never interested in roadracing. It looked boring to me. But he wanted to do roadracing. What we did, we were very good friends, we were like best friends. So basically it was toss a coin, and whatever it landed on, that's what we did. It turned out we went roadracing. So I sold the 'crosser, bought the little MBX80, and we raced the Junior Championship for a couple of years. And after the first year, I started to get a lot of interest off people wanting to help out, because as a family we never had money. We don't have money now, but it was difficult to race. It was a 120 pound bike, and we had one, maybe two sets of tires the whole year.

Ellison says there is no shortage of clowns in MotoGP. image by wolf j

The following year we had a lot of support. And that's the main reason I'm here now. The amount of support I've had is unbelievable, from the word go. I don't know what it was, but people just seemed to want to help. Whenever we were stuck, people were always ready to chuck money in, to buy a flight, or buy another bike, or whatever, and it's enabled us to get to where I am now. If you don't have that it's just ridiculous. It's so expensive you can't do it on your own. So obviously I'm thankful for everybody that's done that. That's how we ended up where I am now.

I've had a crack at GPs. Fair enough. We did have a good year with the WCM, and we had a bit of a disastrous year with the Yamaha, put down to other reasons. But we've won BSB and won the privateer championship. We've won a couple of European championships. We won British championships. We won a World Championship. Had some real good results, been at the top of the timesheets in GPs in the wet. I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed my time. I don't regret any of it. It's all been a learning curve, but some things I would have liked a little bit different, had a little bit more control over.

Q Why America after MotoGP?

A It was more the package that was available. I was kind of looking round at what I had to do, because I knew I wasn't going to get a ride in GPs, or at least with the same team. And even if I was, I wasn't sure whether I was actually going to take it, because of what happened. I was always going to play second fiddle to a rider that had been there ten years longer, which I didn't want. I wanted to be able to go into a team on a package that I knew I could win races on, and I knew that it was down to me, so I could put pressure on me then, rather than anybody else. Because when it's something that's out of your control, you can't do anything about it, like the bike, the chassis, that's out of my control. When everything's there and the whole package is there and I'm not putting the lap times in, I know that's down to me, and I can fix that, which is the situation now. The team obviously is a well-respected team on the hospitality side of things, and they have had very good results in the past. They've had a couple of years now, the last two years they haven't got many results, and I think that's just more down to actual leadership in the racing department, which now we've got Dwayne McCracken. He's running the job now. Along with Dwayne, the mechanics that are working with us, Honda, the help from HRC, the help from Dunlop, and still, obviously, being the Corona Extra team, the extra oomph behind it with the money and the sponsorship side of things.

The whole package just seemed like this is something I can get on, and there's no excuses now. If I go slow, then it's me. So it's more of a personal thing for me, that I want to go out there and get some results.

Q It's almost a trend now- Hodgson left MotoGP and came here, now you're here ...

A It's just because, I think, with the American championship, people just seem to be able to—they give you a chance.

Those guys that are helping me with racing lines now, they know I'm going to be out there trying to beat them. By the end of the day, they'll know that now they're better than me. So they're not scared of helping me. Whereas in other paddocks, it's always, "Oh, no, we're not going to do that, we can't do this." But over here, it's just enjoyment. It's racing. They respect you, you respect them, everything's equal, and it's just the possibilities, I think. What is actually achievable over here is realistic, whereas with the GP paddock, like I said before, things are out of your control.

The people are above you. There's too much control with regards to the tires and what you get and all that kind of stuff. Everything here is a lot more equal. It's a lot friendlier. The money's there. It's not that you get a lot of money to start with, it's the fact that there's money there, contingency money and prize money, so that you've got some bonuses at the end of it, so you feel like you've achieved something.

Whereas over there, you push your balls and you get nothing. And then if you don't do well, you get kicked out. Whereas over here, if you don't do well, they look at why you didn't do well, and say, "Well, maybe if we give him a little bit of help, he'll do better." And that's what I like about it.