In “10 Minutes + 2 Laps with…”, we take the same amount of time required to complete a Mission AFT SuperTwins Main Event (give or take a red flag) and use it to catch up with, and hopefully learn a little about, some of the more prominent figures on the Progressive American Flat Track scene. This week, we caught up with Estenson Racing Owner Tim Estenson.

AmericanFlatTrack.com: For the better part of the past decade, you’ve committed a huge amount of time, effort, and resources to take Yamaha to Grand National Championship heights it had not seen since the days of Kenny Roberts a half century ago. I guess my question is, why? Was there some preexisting connection you had with the brand that motivated you to take on that challenge?

Tim Estenson: There was. I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and, in the beginning, my father had a small dealership. We had anything from fishing boats to snowmobiles to motorcycles, and we had the Yamaha dealership. So I grew up as a little teeny kid, crawling around the floors of a small Yamaha shop.

I started riding with training wheels before I could ride a bicycle. And up in our area, motocross wasn't as popular as flat track. So I just started racing flat track and, obviously, it was Yamaha only. And that's really where it began.

My career took me from running local races to the outlaw circuit to becoming a Novice and then a Junior and so on. And then I realized I didn’t have the money or talent to go any further. And at that point, I got hurt pretty bad and decided to go into the real world and get a job.

AFT: It’s something of a footnote now, but your team’s first Grand National Main Event win came on an Indian. I’m curious if that was bittersweet for you in any way.

TE: When I first came back to racing after being gone for all of my adult life, we started with a Harley-Davidson XR750. I entered in the middle of the season with a rider and we did just okay – never better than like seventh to tenth – somewhere in that area.

We went into the next year, and while the Indian just came out, in the back of my mind, I was thinking of the Yamaha. So we went with Yamaha. We had Mike Owens of J&M build us a frame, and we put it together.

We really had trouble making it work. And I knew we had really good guys, so I broke down and went out and bought Indians. After that, we did pretty well every week, and eventually we won a race.

And as I'm walking up to the podium, there was no excitement because I didn't do anything. I bought a motorcycle, changed a couple of things, went to the racetrack, and we raced it. And in my days, you created something, you built something, you engineered something, and you made it a badass motorcycle.

I couldn't get any satisfaction from winning on a bike that was a purpose-built flat track bike. Right after that, I just made the decision that I don't want to do this if I'm going to do it this way. That’s when I went all in on the Yamaha side.

I said, ‘We can figure this out. We can get there.’

We were going out and just not doing it right. We were making a subtle change here or a subtle change there. But what I kept doing was trying to do the same thing they’ve been doing since the late 1960s. We had this group of frames. We had this group of forks. We had this group of suspension.

I kept trying to outsource and buy things and put them on the motorcycle. And in most cases, we had no results… and in some cases, we had negative results. And I was waiting on things for internals for the engines.

And we'd go out and we'd race and we’d get ninth or tenth. I was paying my guys money because they couldn't plan on winning money at the racetrack. But I knew I needed to have good riders to actually engineer and create a winning bike. So that was a real fine line to walk.

The biggest hiccup was a timing issue, where it was set incorrectly on the motor. We started blowing up engines, and we thought we were doing something wrong with the electronics. In one season, we blew up, I think it was 26 engines. That sounds impossible. But they had the starting time point wrong by a certain number of degrees.

That was when I ended working with anybody outside my team. I figured out we had to do everything ourselves. And about that time of the ninths and tenths, is when I met Tommy Hayden. We started talking more generally. He was going to work part time and help us find sponsors and stuff like that. But as soon as we started, I saw how ultra-competitive he is, and within eight or nine months, he became the Team Manager.

We decided that we needed to do almost everything ourselves. We wanted to create everything internally. We could do it better, and we could do it cheaper. That was the road toward building a competitive bike.

We brought everything in-house, and we quit buying frames from other people. We started designing our own frames, and we brought on Caleb Kehoe to work with on the engineering side. Caleb has been working on all things related to my motorcycles, including engine development. He received his Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Degree and a Masters of Science in Motorsport Engineering from Oxford Brookes University in the UK and spent some time with Harley-Davidson. We made a really big swing, and before too long we had a bike that was pretty competitive.

And when Dallas (Daniels) was coming up with me (in AFT Singles), he didn't experience all the negativity on the bike. The riders before him would get excited about something, and then it wouldn’t work.

But Dallas, in his mind, he always just figured he could ride it. And he hopped on it and did some testing, and we’re like, ‘This is great.’

That’s not to downplay the other riders, a number of whom were really good. JD Beach, obviously, was a home run.

But JD had been on our other bikes as well – lots of them. And for Dallas to get on it and be able to give us feedback from someday who had never ridden one was really helpful. We were able to compare it to what JD was telling us, which was also very positive.

So it was a very difficult road. But I was extremely stubborn, and I just knew we could make the Yamaha work. I wouldn’t give up on it.

Last year was an unbelievable season for anybody, let alone a team that had the struggles we did just trying to get into the top ten. It was a really hard-fought year. And everybody on our team just hit it. We'd make mistakes at a race and then find a way to battle through it.

AFT: As you referenced, you finally got that Grand National Championship last season. But it only came after coming oh-so-close in 2024, only to have it foiled by a training accident. Dallas has admitted to still having a twinge of regret, not being able to get Jared (Mees) and the Indian before they exited the scene. Do you feel the same way?

TE: Well, I do.

There were a lot of rumors about us. People love us or hate us, like in any sport. They say we bought a championship. It’s just silliness.

I mean, the hours that we work behind the scenes… It's not about spending money, it's about your commitment. I just hung up with Tommy not two hours ago, and he said right now we’ve got three guys that have been coming in at 8:00 a.m. and going home at 2:00 a.m. We do everything, and we wear engines out on the dyno. Blood, sweat, and tears go into this deal.

Everybody thought that some of the teams didn’t want Indian there last year, but I was a proponent. I was the guy that was in their face saying, ‘Let Indian race another year. Let them do this. I’ve worked so long and so hard be competitive, we want to race head-to-head with Jared.’

But obviously that didn't happen. We did get to go head-to-head with another brand, and that was fine. In hindsight, the schedule with all the Short Tracks was a good transition, allowing other brands to compete. The Short Tracks are rider-driven, and the beauty of it was, look at how many podiums we had with three different brands, and we hadn’t seen that in years.

And it comes back to what flat track really is; it’s about building a bike and coming out racing.

AFT: This year, you’re going to have the same line-up, correct? Dallas in SuperTwins and Tom (Drane) in Singles?

TE: Yeah. Dallas is ready and has been training all winter. And Tom's coming back from Australia soon. It’s their summer there, so he’s been riding and training a lot.

And then, Sam (Drane), who just turned 15, is coming back as well, and the Road to AFT will be featured at several races.

AFT: Did you consider moving Tom up to SuperTwins this season after he won the Singles title last year? 

TE: We want to take it a little slow. We're going to see how the year goes. I believe the Singles class is going to be incredibly competitive this year.

We want Tom back comfortable on the 450, and then we’ll make some decisions into the season. We want to win both titles again this year to prove it wasn’t a fluke.

But once we feel that we’re there, we’ll make some decisions. The series allows a rider running a full Singles season to be a Wild Card in six SuperTwins races during the year. We’re not against that.

We put him on a SuperTwins bike that year in Springfield, and we had no idea he’d do what he did. We didn’t have him on one of the primary bikes, and we didn’t have him on a new motor. And he was basically up there at the front the whole time until the motor let loose.

That was totally our fault – we just wanted him to go out and get some laps in. We didn’t expect him to be running first, second, or third.

But another year in Singles we also allow him more time to develop his body strength and conditioning. He’s a pretty small statured young man, and we want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the athletes.

AFT: Last year, you were considered the preseason favorite in both classes. This year there are similar expectations, only you’re actually defending the #1 plates. Does it feel any different from that perspective? 

TE: No, it doesn't. We haven't even put the #1 plates on the bikes yet.

Everybody's staying very, very humble about it. We try to keep that atmosphere that, while last year was great, that’s behind us, and it’s our job to do it again.

From a rider standpoint, I think Dallas is just ultra-focused. He's a special young man, and his on-track mind is just incredible, anticipating the moves of others. His race craft is just continuing to improve.

And with the bike we’re bringing this year, which is a little bit different, I think we’re going to be hard to beat.

And that's certainly a bold statement, and one that Tommy wouldn't want me to make. But I believe that, you know, we're dealing in racing – so if the bike doesn’t break and my rider doesn’t get hurt – I think we’re going to be right there, and hopefully do it two years in a row.

AFT: Okay, it’s time for the two bonus questions. First, can you name an interest or hobby of yours that is completely removed from racing, engines, or wheels?

TE: (Pause) Man, you got me. I mean, I have Frenchies. My dogs go everywhere with me except when I'm at the races,, so I guess I said that’s my main hobby.

AFT: Last one. What would be your death row-style last meal? 

TE: That would be surf and turf. Baked potato, butter only. Salad with raspberry vinaigrette.