The moment Michael McLing has worked for his entire life has finally happened.
McLing, who has been racing dirt bikes since he was seven years old, made his professional supercross debut this month.
The Edgewood Academy graduate hit the course at Birmingham’s Protective Stadium on March 9 in the AMA Supercross Championship Tour. McLing’s race was Round 9 of the 17-round tour.
“This was a dream come true for me,” McLing said. “This is what every little kid who plays this sport dreams of. Everybody wants to race professionally.”
Round 9 of the tour was McLing’s first race simply because he didn’t know he was eligible for the event.
Racers have to earn a specific amount of points from events to earn their professional card, and he earned all of his points in one spot but did not know it. That was at the amateur national championship in August held at Loretta Lynn Ranch in Tennessee.
He needed to place in the Top 20 to earn his points, and finished in 18th place overall. That gave him his professional license for this year’s tour, but he didn’t know he had it until his manager called halfway through the season.
He checked, saw he had his points, and Birmingham’s race was up next.
“When I saw that my first race was going to be in Birmingham, which is my home track, it really made me want to race that even more,” McLing said. “It was amazing, it really was.”
In the event, McLing was placed in Group C qualifying races in the 250SX division.
McLing did not qualify for the heats, but he did have a successful event.
The requirement for qualifying is to have one of the fastest lap times. Out of 18 racers in his group, McLing had the ninth fastest lap time. He was consistent, and had a better average lap (1:13.0755) than 15 of the 17 other racers, but his fastest lap was just 1:10.6850.
In the second qualifying race, McLing cut down on his fastest lap time but it still wasn’t enough to place him in the heats. He finished with a fastest lap of 1:03.2510, which was 12th of 19 racers.
“It only takes one good lap to get into the heat races,” McLing said. “You have to put down a really good fast lap down, which I didn’t manage to do. But I learned a lot from my first event. The biggest thing for me is that I learned there’s a whole bunch of people from Alabama who support me and came to watch me.”
McLing is going to try and continue racing this tour, but he doesn’t think he will be able to follow the tour across the country every weekend.
Instead, he will continue working his full time job at Uniti Fiber and riding on the weekends when he can. The next race he thinks he will race is Race 14 of 17, which is held at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.
This summer, he will race in a few events of the outdoor pro nationals, but he is taking this first year as a professional slow as he continues working full time.
“This is a learning experience for me,” McLing said. “I’ve been doing a lot of working out of town so I haven’t been getting the riding time I need, but next year will really be where I hit it hard and set some high goals for myself.”
McLing’s dreams are still there, but he’s realistic and knows he has to maintain his full time job and is not pursuing racing full time. At least not yet.
Instead, McLing is working on keeping himself in physical shape and racing when he’s not out of town for work. When he is out of town, he uses hotel gyms to try and maintain a regular workout schedule.
Then when he’s back in town, he’s riding before work, after work and on the weekends. He is riding at Monster Mountain at Tallassee trying to improve his game.
“I’ve only been riding Supercross since around February while everyone else has been doing this for 10+ years,” McLing said. “I’m a little behind on my schedule there, but I’m just trying to ride and keep myself in shape physically while maintaining my full time job.”
