Ryan Dungey has spent his professional career at the top of the sport. Plucked from the amateur ranks by the legendary racer-turned-team-manager Roger DeCoster, Dungey immediately excelled as a pro via an incredible work ethic and desire to win. Throughout the span of his decade-long career, Dungey has been the mark of consistency in American motocross, but in 2016 succumbed to a neck injury that pulled him out of the AMA Pro Motocross Championship in the midst of his battle with eventual champ Ken Roczen. Finally, Dungey is back, and ready to prove that his summer off did nothing to quell his incredible speed and race ability.

 

Red Bull: Ryan you just got back from SMX in Germany, which was your first race back after your injury, how was it?

Ryan Dungey: It was good. It was my first race back from injury and thankfully I’m 100-percent healthy. I lost a little bit of fitness but once I was able to get back on the bike and build up the physical side of things, everything came back nicely — then we started to hit some Supercross riding. It had been about four months since I had been on the gate, so there was a little bit of adrenaline and the nerves were a little jumpy, but we were able to calm down and get back in a good groove. We were able to bring home the first-ever Manufacturers Cup for KTM with Marvin [Musquin] and [Jeffrey] Herlings so it was definitely a great weekend. With it being the first race back, to have some success was a lot of fun and we’ll keep building from here. 

Straight Rhythm is such a different beast, what’s the strategy like on race day compared to a normal Supercross?

There’s a couple of things that are unique about it, one of those being that there are no turns, just a bunch of rhythm. Which is fun, but it doesn’t make it easy; it’s almost more difficult than your normal Supercross as far as just getting the rhythm down and making no mistakes. Getting through everything smooth, fast and efficiently is the key. The other thing that makes it unique is that you’re not racing against 20 guys at one time, it’s just you and one other guy and you win or you lose, so it’s pretty simple. It’s almost a little higher pressure because you know you have to hit everything just right. You can’t afford a hiccup because once you make that mistake because it's such a close race and you’ve only got a half mile to make it back up. It’s definitely fun to switch things up a bit, get out of the racing we’re used to and come into more of a drag race type of event.

Any expectations going into the event?

You know, not really. You definitely don’t go there to get second by any means — you want to win, but just to be there and see the fans and how much they get into it, it’s really great. I think with all the riders and the fans that attend the event, it’s not such a high-pressure situation; it’s more of a fun event. It’s definitely cool of Red Bull to think of these types of things, we have such a long racing career and it allows us to have some fun.

You got some time off this summer, which was the first time you’ve really had that in your career. Has that affected you heading into 2017?

Absolutely I mean with racing and the seasons, you’re racing eight months out of the year. You know a lot of people think you get four months off in the offseason, but what they don’t know is we only get about a month off from riding, which is a good bit, but there’s so much preparation that comes with racing that we’re back on the bike in October hitting it pretty hard to get ready for the new season. So with this injury I was able to get a couple months off, which obviously wasn’t ideal but I think that in any situation you can look at the positives — I was able to rest up my injury and get some rest mentally. On the physical side, obviously I was a little bit out of shape, but with taking the time off your body is more fresh and it’s able to adapt a little better [to training] because of that, so that has been nice