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LOREN
LOWRY
Loren Lowry is one of the few men with a foot fi rmly in
both the James Stewart and Chad Reed camps, as
he’s spent time driving the motor home for each rider.
(Those relationships come from his days driving the
semi for the old San Manuel Yamaha team.) But with
neither James nor Chad racing this summer, “Big L”
picked up a summer gig driving the GEICO Honda rig.FIVE MINUTES WITH
BY JASON WEIGANDT // PHOTO BY RICH SHEPHERDRacer X: You picked up a summer job.
Loren Lowry: Yeah. Basically, I’m waiting
on Chad Reed to see about what he’s
got going on for next year. I like to keep
busy. I have my own business—I do
custom garage fl ooring and stuff. The
GEICO driver, Shane [Nalley], asked me
if I would be interested in fi lling in for
outdoors, so I said yeah, I’ll do it.
How does a guy from Fairmont, West
Virginia, even end up in this position?
I’m originally from Virginia. I had a pro
license. I would go to the races and
try to qualify. It never really worked out
because I worked full-time—one of
those stories. I talked to Ron Heben [of
KTM at the time] for like two years before
that, and I’ve kind of stayed in touch. Hesaid, “Hey, are you ready to drive? Get
out here.” So I started with Red Bull
KTM. The West Virginia thing is from my
wife. I told her we can live anywhere. Her
parents have probably 800 or so acres in
West Virginia, so we built a house on it.
Through KTM is kind of how you
hooked up with Larry Brooks?
Yeah, when Larry got L&M going, he
asked me to come over there with him,
and that was really great. Six years over
there. I made it pretty much to the end,
the Jeff Ward Racing thing. They kind of
shut down after that.
Is that why you knew Reed, from his
time over at L&M?
Yeah, Reed from L&M, and also James
Stewart from over there. I’ve personally
worked for both of them. I drove James’
bus for four years. I always got along
with both of them.
So you’ve never had to pick a side?
You’re probably the only guy to pull
this off so well.
[Laughs] Yeah, probably. I don’t think
they’re fans of each other, but theyrespect each other’s racing and
everything. When I was with Chad this
past year, it was great, and I loved
working for James too. I get it every
weekend: who you like better? But
behind the scenes is confi dential.
Fifteen, sixteen years that you’ve been
driving to the races?
Yeah, pretty much driving to them all the
time. Some of the early days, there was a
couple times I had to actually build bikes
for mechanics that had family issues and
they couldn’t make it.
It sounds like you actually have
experience as a racer, which not all the
truck drivers do. That’s got to help. You
know how to work on bikes. I would
assume you do some fi lming too?
Supercross, I would fi lm Chad or James
when I was with him. I fi lmed them
just like I would if I worked at one of
the teams. There’s actually things you
see sometimes up above—like, say, in
supercross—that somebody like the
mechanics or someone down would
miss it, and you got to fi ll them in.I always got along
with both of them.”