Catching up with Mike Cafro of MCR

By Anthony Martin
Photos by Jamie Johnson and Mark Williams

Happy New Year Mike. I hope you and yours had a great holiday season and it wasn’t too riddled with worry and anxiety from all the things that need to be done before the 2011 WORCS opener.
Thanks! I wish I would have went on a vacation or something, but we really don’t have a lot of time between the last race and the first, and with the holidays it makes it even more stressful to get everything ready for the first race of 2011.

Congratulations for your success last year at WORCS. MCR had two riders on the pro championship box, that’s something to be very proud of. It was a real heart-breaker for Beau Baron though. It’s tough to see someone fight so hard for something and have it not come through for them. Number one plate or not, Team MCR has really proved to be a big threat in the pro ATV WORCS scene.
Last season was tough to say the least, we had a lot of good come out of it, but lost the most important battle over something that really shouldn’t have happened. That’s racing, I believe the saying goes. We moved on and are concentrating on 2011. Getting back the #1 plate is the main goal and hopefully obtaining a few more too!

Explain MCR to the readers that may not know what your team is all about.
After Temecula Motorsports was sold half way through the year and I was told they were done racing. I still had commitments with sponsors, so I created Mike Cafro Racing (MCR). I figured if I could run a race team for someone else, I could do it for myself. What I didn’t realize, is just how much money it takes to run a race team.

What are your major changes for 2011?
We are trimming down the team for 2011. We will have only three pro riders competing. Last year I bit off more than I could chew. I was lucky to pull it off at all. We had some late sponsors come in to help out with the second half of the year, which helped a lot. Also this year we will have a new look, it was time to freshen things up a bit.

Any new sponsors for 2011?
We have picked up some new sponsors and lost some old ones, but ultimately have a solid program going into 2011. We will be leaving DWT and Motoworks this year. Some of the main sponsors feel there is a conflict of interests competing so intensely with their owner’s race team. We will be joining forces with Pro Circuit for 2011 and are stoked to start building a relationship with them.

How are things going?
We have been doing a lot of testing and we just raced the Soboba GP to work out the bugs before round one. Beau finished first, just 30 seconds in front of Josh Creamer, hopefully it stays that way all year! The 2011 WORCS will be very interesting. I think it will probably be the most competitive year ever.

Who makes up Team MCR for 2011?
This year I will only have Beau Baron, Davi Haagsma and myself running in the pro class. I wanted to lessen my work load, so I could concentrate more on putting both Beau and Davi on top of the podium.

Obviously the economy has affected everyone and everything. Your sponsors included. As a team manager how have you adapted to the shrinking sponsorship support?
For us, this year should be be a little better than last year actually. Some of my long time sponsors, like Maxxis, have really stepped it up for our team this year. Also, I try to run everything as efficiently as possible and slimming the team down will also help with my time and expenses.

What is harder, racing/training or prepping the race team?
Prepping for the team takes 90% of my time. I think it’s way harder and more stressful on me than just getting myself ready to race. I use the racing and training as my outlet, but maybe if all I did was train and race, that might change for the opposite.

You seem to be in fifty places at once. How do you manage to put a team together, race and wrench? Who helps you manage everything?
During the day, I spend a lot of time driving, talking on the phone and on the computer, basically making things happen for the race team. Most of my nights are spent in the shop wrenching. How late I stay out there depends on how soon we are racing. I always seem to have some late nights as race weekend nears. I am a control freak so I try to accomplish most of the stuff myself, but everyone helps when it’s crunch time.

Does managing the team ever get to be too much? Do you feel overwhelmed and wish you just had a simple 40-hour per week full time job like most people?
Yes, very much so, right now is a perfect example, I am overwhelmed. Three days before the race and my race quad is just a frame, but I don’t think I would rather be doing anything else. It’s hard working for someone once you have been your own boss, I tried that when I went to work for Quad Magazine. It didn’t work for me. The one thing I could do without is the stress though.

You have always been pretty big in desert racing. Do you still race or support the Baja?
Baja will always be a part of me. We had won championships in Mexico and honestly, I wanted to see if I could do the same in WORCS. Now I have a goal to take home multiple championships in one year, Baja being one of them, so you might just see us down there again.

What is an average day like for MCR?
I wake up about 11, lay on the couch and watch TV til about 3 or 4. No, just kidding. My routine changes on a daily basis. It depends on how close we are to a race and how many races we have that month, but basically my entire life revolves around this race team.

What do you think about the format change for the WORCS Pro class?
I personally think the two-hour format is the way to go. WORCS is endurance racing and the two-hour format separates the men from the boys. I feel they simply made the changes to get the attendance up. I think it effects the integrity of what WORCS racing is, but its not my call.

Are there any changes you would make to ATV racing in general? Do you like the direction it is going?
I would like to see the factories get back involved, without them it doesn’t allow the sport to grow. Hopefully if the economy picks up they will get back into it and things will get better.

Any thanks or shout-outs?
I would like to especially thank Maxxis this year for really stepping up our program, without them there would not be a race team. Without the sponsors and the people that help me with the race team I wouldn’t be able to pull this off. And I can’t forget about my fiance, Julie, she puts up with a lot of my BS that most wouldn’t.

Thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule. Good luck this
season, I hope all your goals are met for 2011.
Thanks a ton! We are going to need it!

Tags:

Comments

comments