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RACER PROFILES

AMSOIL Swapmoto Race Series Rider Profile | Bob Zingg

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Presented by AMSOIL 

Age: 40

Hometown: Murrieta, CA

Sponsors: Zingg Racing, Answer, Bell, Arma, LRG, Matrix, Moto Mafia, FMF.

Bob Zingg and his son Aidan are a frequent site at the AMSOIL Swapmoto Race Series, and we love to watch the interaction the father and son share at our events. Motocross is a family sport, and the Zingg family is one of many who make our events so enjoyable!

We’ve interviewed your charismatic young son Aidan before, but you’re out here today and it’s your turn!. You’ve been a semi-regular competitor at our race series right? So what keeps you coming back for more on the vet classes?

The ability to do this with my kids is super unique and for us both to be competitive in our classes and give it everything that we have, it’s something unique that my dad shared with me and I’m trying to do that with my son. I think it taught me a lot of work ethic, as far as what I do in business now and it kept me out of a lot of trouble when I was young. For the most part.

Yeah, it’s got to be super cool to come here with your boy. You’re both racing and if you take the right approach, it’s a great family relationship-building experience right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I can’t say that it’s been super smooth sailing. I was that mini dad right, for a while. And I have an even younger son now and I’m trying to learn from the mistakes right, better myself. But I think that’s anytime that you do anything, racing motorcycles, it’s a new experience. You got to learn from what you’ve done and better that. So as he’s getting on on this, he just started racing a KTM E5 and absolutely loves it. His transition from his Stacyc to his E5 has been easy. It’s the electrification of our sport, right? But that’s going well and yeah, it’s super, super special. It was special when Aidan and I were able to go to Loretta’s together, and my goal this year is to try and get all three of us there and fishing and the family trip and spend a week. That time you’ll never get back.

So were you a pro racer back in your day?

No. I had maybe a couple of months stint where I gave it a go of being a pro and just never could put it together. And it’s that kind of shit or get off the pot thing. Like is this going to go anywhere or… And you ultimately got to decide, right? Like is this my path and am I good enough? And if you can’t check all those boxes it’s probably best to go a different direction. But like I said, I wouldn’t have changed anything about it. It definitely taught me a lot as far as the grind, the practice. That’s the thing about this sport, the one for one, right? You go out and you practice hard, you see those results on race day. Same thing happens at work, right? You crush it, you work into the night and you keep going and going and going. You see those results. So it’s all I know, really. And I feel like any individual sport, I feel like that can transition and transcend into my boys the same way.

Yeah. I think motocross racing at its most general level is good for building character.

Yeah. Yeah 100%. So my youngest boy, he already has a very confident stature. He runs around like, “this is my show.” Whereas Aidan on the other hand, he has always been pretty withdrawn, but he absolutely lives dies and breathes this stuff. It gave him and taught him confidence that he walks around in school, collar’s popped a little tighter, he’s talking to a girl that he likes, he’s getting straight As in school. To have that kind of confidence and produce results on and off the track. And it’s 100% because of motocross racing

So what is it that you do now? Zingg Racing, it’s graphics and.other printed things, correct?.

Yeah, so my dad in like ’97 started a company called Zing Racing. It was one G back then. Our last name has two for whatever that contributes to this story. As most father and son situations go on, we kind of had a… I was like, “hey dad the market’s going digital. We need to explore that option.” He said, “no, screen printing is the way to go.” Whatever. So we kind of split ties. I started another company and the original part was, let’s do motorcycle graphics and number plates. Well, I missed out by a couple of year window. So then Malcolm McCassey back in the day when he was selling this place when it was Star West asked if we could do some hay bale covers and redo the sign out front and do some flags…

And all of a sudden I noticed very, very quickly that there was a whole other side still in the motocross industry, which I love and I’m super passionate about, that we can cater to and service that side of the industry. So to come back around to your original question, we build all the trophies for 2X as well as for Swapmoto Race Series and are trying to get further out on that. We do a lot of onsite activations, events for cities and trade shows. Stacyc is one of our larger clients. We sponsor Red Bull KTM team, sprinter wraps, semi wraps, stuff like that.

 

Okay. So a lot of larger format stuff…

And I try and stay in that because here’s the thing with the graphics industry, as I said, I love it and I’m never going to not do it. It’s just something I absolutely love to do. But as you see with a lot of things in this industry, it’s kind of been eroded down to you’re going to spend a lot of time designing stuff and really the margin. So I’m trying to point the company in a direction where I see that there’s an open spot for us to really capitalize on. And my thing is I love to build stuff, right? So like 3D rendering stuff and taking a project like, hey, how can I do this? Or how can we brand the track for mini major, right? And then illustrating that in a 3D rendering. And then when Aaron’s got to go and try and sell that to his sponsor, I can show him like, hey, this is what it would look like with Monster here or Amsoil there. And then showing that to the sponsor and then they don’t have to try and wrap their head around some crazy idea that I concocted.

 

 

 

 

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Donn Maeda

Donn Maeda is a 30-year veteran in moto-journalism, having worked at Cycle News and Dirt Rider before launching MXracer Magazine and TransWorld Motocross Magazine. Maeda is the Editor-In-Chief at Swapmoto Live and you can catch him on a dirt bike or in the saddle of a mountain bike on most days.

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