Monster Energy CDR Yamaha recruit Phil Nicoletti has been a welcome addition in this year’s Boost Mobile AUSX Supercross Championship, teaming up with the high-profile Craig Dack-led operation for 2025. With a single round of the series left in Adelaide this weekend, MotoOnline caught up with the 36-year-old American to get his thoughts in Check In.

Image: Foremost Media.

To start with, Phil, how have you been enjoying your time in Australia?

I would say that I’ve enjoyed my stay in Australia, along with being part of the CDR team and everything, but I wouldn’t say I’ve been enjoying my results. So, I’d say it’s 50-50 at the moment. Am I using this as a kind of vacation? I’d say yes, but at the same time, I’m still putting in the time and my laps, and I want to do well on Saturdays. At the start of round one, I broke the top of my hand when I came together with [Luke] Clout, which was unfortunate and put me on the back foot for both of those events. I tried to heal up for Sydney, but then I got taken down by Soubs [Cedric Soubeyras] in the second final after getting fifth in the first race, which smashed my hand again. It’s improved a lot, though, since then, and is pretty much healed now.

What has your experience been like racing for CDR? I feel like sometimes it’s underestimated how good some of these Australian teams are…

You can see from CDR’s side that it’s super-good and very, very professional. The crew that they have are amazing – and even when I was a kid, you know, 18, 19, 20 – when I came over in 2011, CDR was already an iconic team, and I thought for the longest time, they had the best running Yamaha in the world. So to be able to come down and be part of the team has been great – it’s just a bit of a bummer with the results. Dean [Wilson] is still really good, Clout rides well, but I’d still like to be fighting for third, you know, hovering around the box, which the team deserves. But to answer your question, I’ve been really impressed with the team and they’ve given me everything I need to do well.

Image: Foremost Media.

From a competitive standpoint, it looks like the AUSX field is getting better and better. Are you surprised by the depth of the Australian field?

Not really, I know a lot of the guys who I am racing with – I’ve raced them for years and years now. Soubs has been around for a long time, Clout is a good supercross rider, Dean is great as well, plus Mitchell Harrison is solid. [Hayden] Mellross is good too – they all ride really, really well. And when there are six or seven decent guys, they’re always towards the front, so you’re always going to be in a battle with them, which is tough. I don’t underestimate any of the riders – they are solid competition, for sure.

With where you’re at in your career, talking about Australia or Canada as such, did you envision racing these championships when you retired from full-time US competition?

I said in my retirement thing that I was never just going to stop racing altogether. I want to do races that excite me, and then say with the Canadian series, it’s not that it was easy, but the schedule was racing from June 10 to August 1. So that was really manageable, and I could still enjoy riding my dirtbike and having a routine down at ClubMX. Then, when the CDR thing came up, it made sense for me to come down because it was five races. I chose to come here because I knew the team was really good, and I’d be well taken care of, so that was the biggest reason why I came down here.

Image: Foremost Media.

A lot of these international deals seem to be put together year by year, so is it a case of waiting to see what comes up each year as to what your racing schedule looks like?

Yeah, I’m still up in the air as to what the future looks like for me. I’m not sure if I will go back to Canada or not – I had some WSX offers this year, but the Australian offer… Was it as much money [as WSX]? No, but I didn’t have to travel all around the world – I only needed to come to Australia and ride for a really good team, knowing what I was getting into. WSX would’ve been hard trying to organize bikes and teams – I just like going to one place, knowing my team and the guys involved, and the CDR option for me was really good. I was a little skeptical about coming back to supercross racing because I had been done with it for a little over a year now, but it wasn’t as gnarly as I thought, so it was a bit more comforting to actually do that.

The video of you and Clout went viral after Redcliffe, but the audio wasn’t overly clear. What did you say there? Because to me, it looked more like a, ‘Hey man, chill out. It’s round one.’

It was exactly that. Obviously, you hear all the chirpers online and stuff like that, but I literally just told Luke, ‘Listen, you want to be AUSX champion, why are you doing this in the heat race?’ And you know, it wasn’t bad – he said he didn’t mean it and I know that – but with the scenario, how it happened with him crushing the top of my hand, I just told him to relax. And then the way the Australian series works, gate selection for both finals is based on how we finish in the heat race. So, I went to the start line 13th in both races, and then in supercross, your start is everything. We were stuck on the outside for both races, which I think is flawed. But yeah, there were some words exchanged between us, but I was like, ‘Hey, can we just be smart in the heat race?’ I was alright with taking second place, I know he was faster than me, so it was more just not needing such a f**k up in the first heat race of the year, you know? It was just a position that neither of us needed to be in, but at the same time, it’s racing – things happen.

How important would a strong result in Adelaide be for you this weekend at the grand final?

It would cap it off, make it all worth it, you know. It’s, you know, yeah, you have one bad race. It’s like, oh, great. You have next week to really follow it up. But, I got one more shot. Now the boys are gone. But still, everyone else, you know, is riding very well, too. So, yeah, I got to let my nuts swing a little bit and kind of see where I’m at and kind of go from there. I feel like I can still do it, but if you don’t do it day in and day out and eat, sleep and breathe, supercross is different… Outdoors for me is much more natural. But if you’re not in the swing of supercross and you have the timing, the technical side of stuff down, it doesn’t work very well. So we’ll see. Like I said, we got one more next weekend and try and get a decent result and see where we come up.