Kiwi veteran and former world title runner-up Josh Coppins will enter his second season racing in the Monster Energy MX Nationals, Australian Motocross Championship, this year.

After suffering a shoulder injury at last year’s final round in Coolum and missing out on a chance to take home an Australian motocross title, Coppins will be back on the start line at round one in Conondale come 1 April.

MotoOnline.com.au gave the CDR Yamaha rider a call to get his opinion on having a new teammate, find out how his pre-season preparation is coming along and to speak about the possibility of retirement on the horizon.

You spent much of the time recovering from you injury in Europe, now we’ve seen you do some racing in New Zealand. How has your pre-season preparation been so far in the lead-up to the Monster Energy MX Nationals?

It’s been good, it’s been a tough road coming back and I’m just starting to get to a good place now, just in time really so it’s good.

What’s it been like in New Zealand during the nationals? Ben Townley has obviously been fast over there and it seems like you’re coming along pretty good too, so what has it been like for you over there racing?

It’s been really good, obviously Ben got the jump start on me, he had all his testing done earlier and had really good speed. A lot of people have mentioned to me that I haven’t been winning much, and that it must be tough. But to be honest, I feel like I’m riding really well, I feel like the level is really high, so I feel more positive about it then anything because it’s really helped me get up to speed.

This time last year Coops [Cody Cooper] was beating me, but at the moment he hasn’t beaten me in a race, so I feel like I’m at a pretty good level and having Ben around helped for sure. It’s been a great championship with great tracks so overall it’s been really positive.

Have you been in Australia at all with the CDR guys testing down there in Victoria?

Yeah, I went last week and that was the first time I’ve seen them since Coolum last year, so it was good to catch up with the boys and I’m really happy with the testing we’ve done so far. We have the bike working great.

We’ve made huge steps with only doing some small changes, but overall the bike is a lot better, so I’m really happy with the week I had there. I had to be patient because I wanted to get it done before the New Zealand season, but I just wasn’t in good enough shape until just recently.

Obviously one of the big things in the off-season was Jay Marmont’s departure from Yamaha and the team bringing in Lawson Bopping. Does that change things for you at all or is it just focus on yourself no matter who your teammate is?

I’ve been around a long time and to be honest, it doesn’t really change much for me. Lawson’s a good kid and I met him for the first time last week. I had a good time testing with him, so I think the CDR team is great.

There was never any favouritism towards Jay or me, we just did our job, and it was awesome. To be honest I don’t think it’ll make any difference. Lawson’s a good guy and I look forward to working with him.

We have the season opener coming up in a couple of weeks in Conondale, how much do you think last year’s experience of having a season under your belt will help for this year?

I don’t think it will help much to be honest with you, last year the format was a bit different so it took me a while to get my head around that. We’ve got a new format again this year so I don’t think it will help a lot, maybe being a bit more settled with the team, but I think it’s more the bike that will help.

The Yamaha is quite a different bike and it took me a bit to get used to, but now we having it working so well that I think that its going to be the biggest thing. I don’t think the actual tracks or format or anything like that will really make too much difference.

Finally, is the plan at the moment for 2012 to be your final season?

Yeah, that’s the plan right now, things are going really well at the moment and I’m enjoying it. After last week’s testing Dacka [Craig Dack] kind of said to me I might have to stick around, whether that was just a joke or a serious remark, I’m not sure. I am enjoying it, but it was my plan to stop at the end of 2012 and it still is, so we’ll see how things go.