Dubbed by many fans as the “people’s champ,” Jeffrey Carver, Jr. made big strides in 2017, scoring his first twins win in American Flat Track’s premier class –AFT Twins—at the Lone Star Half-Mile on a privateer Harley-Davidson. For this week’s Facebook Five, fans got a chance to ask Carver some questions and here are his answers…

You’re the Flat Track version of “Man in a Van with a Plan.” Are you content doing your own thing or would a seriously capable bike/team interest you? #peopleschamp

Being in my shoes at the beginning of 2017 (running my own effort) wasn’t really ideal, but it was just back to me and one motorcycle, going racing, kind of like it was in 2016. And after I couldn't really settle into a team, I found that it takes good chemistry and a team willing to work with me to try some of the ideas I had.

So after this season with me and Ben Evans having to drive to every race in a van—which was really a blast—it showed us that you don’t need a huge team or a rig and a whole bunch of money to really go out there and beat the best in the world and also be one of the best.

Instead of going after another team, we’re just building right now. We have a couple of new partners that are getting involved to kind of make that big, serious team. Looking toward 2018 we’ve got a lot of new things coming; we’re going to be rolling in a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier, and I think we’re going to have the bikes and the team to go after a championship. From where I’m at right now, I don't think that ditching what I have and going to something else is what I need to evolve or expand. But then again, I [wouldn’t rule out] joining forces with another team [if the chemistry was right.]

I feel like right now in dirt track there are a couple big teams that have things together. When I look down the road, my ideal team would be something like what Jared [Mees] has built. Mees has his own team, one he’s built; he’s a person in it that runs things, makes the phone calls and puts the group together. I feel like I could make that happen with a good group of people. In the long run, that’s what I want to do.

When was the last time you raced the B.E.T. TT? I love racing that track and saw you fly around it a few times

I think it’s been two, three years now…. I keep missing the races when I come back home. B.E.T. stands for Belleville Enduro Team, which is in Belleville, Illinois. One of my first races ever was there when I was five years old, racing the TT there. They had a TT and motocross and I always did both of them. I was a motocross racer until I was about 12, and got hurt jumping. That’s when we went back to Belleville and started racing TTs again.

Originally on that TT we raced with knobbies, but there were dirt trackers that raced there, too. So we switched to flat track tires and started racing there. Eventually I ended up lapping the whole field of motocross riders. More and more people (from there) started coming and racing... Cole Zabala, Matt Guenther and one of the young up-and-coming amateurs Dallas Daniels. Timmy Mertens, National No. 53, grew up there. So we’ve got a lot of heritage, and a lot of old school dirt track there.

I’d love to go back there and race again. It’s a really cool track, almost as fast as Peoria TT. It’s a fast track, and pretty cool. And it’s where my roots started.

What is the reason for your No. 23? Did you pick that number?

Number 23 goes back to my grandpa, who raced motorcycles. They called him “Crash” Carver, and his number was 23. My dad raced motorcycles as well, growing up. He raced in the woods, a little motocross and, when I was born, the tradition carried on. I started riding when I was about three; we always had 23 number plates on the bikes.

During my amateur career and all the way through singles I had to switch to No. 24p. The year I won the Pro Singles (AFT Singles) Championship in 2010, that’s the year that Kevin Atherton decided to retire. He didn't tell me, but at the banquet when I received the number one plate he brought up a number 23 plate and signed it and handed it to me; he was handing over the number 23. It was really cool! 23 has been a huge deal for me in my life and for other people as well.

How did you get your nickname "The Wizard”?

The Wizard came from hanging out in Kansas after a race, sitting around the campfire with a couple of people. We were just hanging out, shooting the shit, and they were trying to come up with some nicknames for me. I was telling them people called me Candlestick Carver, Bones Carver, stuff like that, I’ve always been real skinny. Something came out about the Wizard and we were laughing about it, we kept putting it down, somehow it just started to stick.

Who is your favorite Grand National Champion?

When I first got into flat track, Chris Carr was really making his run, winning everything. I went to a couple of American Supercamps that he put on, so as a youngster, he was the guy I looked up to. I didn’t know a lot about flat track because I came from motocross, so it was great to have a guy like Chris to look up to. I always had his helmets, his replica with the orange and black and the little wing on it.

But as I got older and learned more about the history of the sport, I learned about some of the legends. Scotty Parker, and maybe even more, Ricky Graham. He’s probably my favorite Grand National Champion. There’s some really good stuff out there about Ricky. He was so talented, and some of the best racers out there will tell you straight up that he was faster a lot of times. There are some pretty cool stories about Ricky, and there’s some cool old videos of him on YouTube. So I have to say Ricky Graham is one of my favorite and the one that I look up to the most because of his ability to overcome adversity.