After a multi-year stint with Yamaha that saw Aaron Tanti experience domestic success and have a taste of racing in the US, he has made the step up to MX1 in the Penrite ProMX Championship onboard an MC 450F. MotoOnline caught up with the Queensland-based 25-year-old amidst the forced mid-season break to get his thoughts on 2021 so far with the factory GasGas Racing Team.

Your 2021 season so far…

It’s been a little bit up and down for me. I started off the year pretty strong, my speed was good everything was good until I crashed and broke my scaphoid at round one of the Sunny State series at Hervey bay. It was a bit of a lengthy recovery from there, I sort of missed out on doing all of the testing and everything with the team, because the time I broke my scaphoid was right around the time we were getting everything together. Unfortunately, I was not healthy enough to come back for round one, I was just healthy enough to come back for round two where I went out on track with not too many expectations other than to finish in the top 10, which was achieved, along with a few crashes at that first round back being uncomfortable. We had a few weeks until the next round, where we were able to do some testing and at the next round at Maitland I took some pretty good results and finished really good with a second and a third in the back-to-back motos, just showing I was coming back to where I needed to be.

Stepping up to MX1 with GasGas…

I’ve signed onto the GasGas factory team on a 450 which is a step up from the 250 class for me. It’s something I was looking at doing if I wasn’t racing overseas again in Supercross and I was pretty pumped to get it. Everything we’ve been doing since the start has all been fun, obviously, there’s a time to be serious when we are at the racing, but still at the end of the day it’s something we all enjoy doing. I still definitely find the enjoyment out of riding, and GasGas being the fun brand is definitely awesome because when we do the photoshoots we get to do a lot of fun stuff, which is pretty cool.

Biggest difference you’ve found between the categories…

I guess the competition in the 450 class has been a lot broader than previous years in just how many people can compete for wins and those top positions, where last time I raced the 250 there was sort of five of us that were swapping out for podiums. In terms of that it’s a big step, because if you make a mistake its quite easy to be out of the top five, even back to 10th, which is sometimes hard to swallow, whereas in MX2 you could crash and still be in the top five as the competition wasn’t as broad – not saying it isn’t now. Also being on the bigger bike with more power to hang onto it consistently for 30 minutes, that’s about the biggest change.

Approach during the extended break…

For me, I’ve been lucky enough to be in Queensland, so I’ve got it pretty good compared to a lot of people, so it’s just been getting the bike time I missed out on in the 6-8 weeks prime pre-season. I’ve just been keeping my fitness up, we’ve just got out of lockdown, but unfortunately I’ve had to self-isolate due to being in close contact with someone I had in my house, so I’ve still got a few more days of not riding. Two weeks off isn’t so bad compared to what some other people are doing.