Joel Smets shares his insights on Andrea Adamo’s journey, from his unexpected but impressive 2023 MX2 world title to the challenges he faced as the defending champion in 2024. Smets discusses the impact of technical changes, the pressure of defending a title, and the mindset needed to get Adamo back to his best for a potential 2025 title challenge. Additionally, he gives us his thoughts on Marc-Antoine Rossi, drawing comparisons to Tom Vialle and outlining the approach needed to help the young talent reach his full potential.
On Adamo winning the title in 2023 and if that added pressure last year…
I never expected him to win the championship in 2023, I have to be very honest. I was more hoping, let’s say, that we could eventually make the progress like what we did when Tom Vialle came in, like in the first year, eventually score some podiums, and then finish like three or four in the championship. But that he was going to showcase that much, let’s say, consistency, honestly, I didn’t expect.
He won only two GP’s, but he was always there. He always took the points when the others made mistakes. So yeah, I think he deserved the championship, but I didn’t expect it for 2024.
It is for sure, winning a championship and then coming into the season as the defending champion puts pressure on you, whether you like it or not, and whether you try to camouflage it or to hide it, and to pretend it’s not. It’s not true. It always does.
I think I’m in the right position to talk about experience. But that wasn’t really… how should I say? That was not really the main reason of his season… Let’s call it an off season, pretty much. So he had the consistency, that is what made him win in 2023 but he was completely lacking that this year.
Of course, there was a bit of a technical reason when we went to our new bikes for 2024. So on the first day, he felt super comfortable always on his 2023 bike. Then when he went to the 2024, for some reason, he never felt comfortable with it, while most of the others did. So yeah, and of course, maybe the fact that he was a defending champion and wanted to show that he deserved the championship the year before, he probably was not patient enough, or was too… How should I say it? Or was too focused on having the perfect bike, you know? Instead of like the year before, he was happy to come in the factory team, and he was happy with whichever bike we gave him. He was focused on racing and he just raced.
For 2024, he kind of had to set up a few new components on the bike, especially shock and fork. And yes, somehow, he was probably looking for the perfect, for the golden perfect setup for the chicken with the golden eggs, but that doesn’t exist. So maybe that came a little bit, or that got worse because of the fact that he wanted to defend that championship, you know? That he was, maybe not patient enough, and maybe looking for too much instead of focusing on riding. But okay, that’s human, he is only human. So, the result is what it is.
On getting Adamo back to his best and if he can challenge for another world title in 2025…
Yes, I do believe so. The way to do it is to make him feel comfortable again with the bike because that will boost his confidence. We’ve been now, we started our 25 prep one month ago, and I have a pretty good feeling that we’re on the right way so far.
I really need to explain to him that you can’t look for the 100% perfect setup for each track, because that setup doesn’t exist. Or maybe it might exist for one track, but then the next track, it might be only your setup, that same setup might only work for 70%. So you need to look for a compromise in setup.
You always, if there’s 20 sections, corners, whatever on the track, and your bike works really nice and cool in 15 sections, then there’s five sections that it’s a little bit less. Maybe three sections are still okay, but two sections are sh*t. But that’s still a pretty good average.
If you can reach that average of your setup and feeling with the bike, that’s good. But if you are constantly looking on every practice day and on every race day for that 90, 100% setup, yeah, you get lost. That’s what happened to Andrea. We try to keep him from doing that. So I really try to explain to him that, hey Andrea, those two, three, four sections that you’re struggling a little bit, it’s up to the rider. You’re a champion, It’s up to you to compensate. On the other parts, the bike helps you in three quarters of the track. You should help the bike in that one quarter. That’s the approach more or less. So yeah, I feel like it’s working. Of course, also on the technical side, we also try to develop a bit more the bike towards, let’s say, his riding style and his wishes. So that’s the two things we try to do to make him fight for the championship again.
On the signing of Marc-Antoine Rossi…
Yeah, exactly. He reminds me a lot of Tom (Vialle). I think there is more pure talent. Tom at the age of 18 when he came to me, he was the same age as Marc-Antoine now. Tom was already a bit more calculated, let’s say.
He had a little bit more maturity, while Marc-Antoine still has that as an aspect, which I love a lot also, which I like a lot, is that he’s more, I should say, on the bike. Off the bike they are very similar, but on the bike Marc-Antoine is still more like a kid, you know, like playing with the bike, throwing whips, pulling wheelies, you know. But I like it because I can see that kid, when he’s on the bike, he’s really enjoying it.
Because with Tom, when he was riding, he was always like smooth and sometimes you were wondering if he was enjoying it, okay. If then he stopped the session and he took the helmet off and he had a smile, okay. Then you had the confirmation that he enjoyed it. But with Marc-Antoine, you can see it on the bike. You can see when he’s riding, you know, like even with the helmet on, you can almost see him smile. The body language tells you that he’s enjoying it, but that makes him also a little bit nonchalant. So that’s a little point where I need to work on with him a little bit.
He has that raw speed. He has just the full package, I think, to become a good rider. I don’t want to use the word world champion because you never know what comes your way and what happens and stuff. So with him, the approach also when Tom came, we never talked about Tom being a potential world champion, no. Especially with Marc-Antoine, also missing half the 2024 season with a serious injury. There’s a long road back and we just want to take it step by step.
Instead of talking about being world champion, we just talk about, let’s try to finish the season. Throughout the season, we will see where we make the progress. We will find out the points to work on and go from there. So we do not have our first goal now, we still need to get him fully recovered and get to his best level from before his injury. Then we will see where we go from there.
You can read the full interview, here.
