If you want job security, don't go motorcycle racing

"I've got nothing for next year," he said at the time, with a resigned shrug.

Now, 11 months later, Fong is leading the Superbike championship, riding for the Attack Performance Progressive Yamaha team. In Superbike racing, no matter how hard the racers work or how fierce their desire to win, the difference between being an occasionally remembered former racer and being a champion often hangs by an exceedingly fragile thread of luck.

A mid-season five-race win streak moved Fong into the points lead at the Permco MotoAmerica Superbikes at Mid-Ohio round.

"It's a dream," Fong said, after winning the Saturday race. "The older I get, I try to live in the moment and enjoy it. You can go from hero to zero before you know it, for sure."

Fong landed one of the best rides in the paddock because a deal for Sean Dylan Kelly to take the Attack Performance spot fell through. He has taken advantage of the opportunity, but dramatic swings of fate are the norm, not a rarity, in the life of a pro racer.

"It's like fighting for your life," said Fong. "Because we love being here. It's in our blood. When you don't have it, it's like life's over. It's a weird feeling. Not many people know about it. When you're not here, it's like you have no purpose, because all you're doing your whole life is fighting to race. It's all you think about."

When I post on social media about something like 51-year-old Larry Pegram racing in Supersport or write about Josh Hayes winning a race at age 50, someone always comments that it shows the weakness of U.S. professional roadracing. But it's not that there aren't enough talented racers. It's that there aren't enough rides to go around for all the young riders trying to get their shot.

That's why 11 of the 14 Motovation Supersport races this year have been won by riders with Superbike victories on their resumes, such as Mathew Scholtz, the 2024 Supersport champion, P.J. Jacobsen, a Supersport World Championship runner up, and Cameron Petersen — not to mention Hayes, until recently the winningest rider in AMA Pro roadracing history. With so few Superbike rides available, these racers have moved to Supersport to keep their careers going.

Scholtz and Jacobsen are fighting for the Supersport title this year, just as they did last year, but Petersen got in between them with two second-place finishes at Mid-Ohio. Though he doesn't want to interfere in the two-man championship battle, Petersen has to fight for his racing life.

"I really don't want to be in the middle of it, I'm such a long way out of the championship," Petersen said. "But, I've got a career, I've got a future ahead of me, I want to stick around, I want to get the best ride possible, and the only way to do that is to get the best results possible. I'm out here racing for myself, racing for my future."

There's more than one way to lose your ride — not just for lackluster results. Scholtz spent nine years in the Superbike class, seven of them with Westby Racing, a rare run of stability for a racer. But when Tryg Westby decided to shut down his team at the end of the 2023 season due to his health, Scholtz had to switch both teams and classes to keep his career going.

"I definitely had some doubts," Scholtz said. "I'd been on a Superbike for nine years. It was a massive change and our pre-season testing on the R6 was not good. We were more than two seconds off where we wanted to be at the tracks we tested at. So I went to the first round worried that I wouldn't even get the top five in a class that I should be doing well in."

Of course it turned out more than well, with Scholtz winning the 2024 title on the Strack Racing Yamaha YZF-R6 and currently leading the 2025 championship on the new YZF-R9.

Winning doesn't guarantee job security, either. Xavi Forés set a record by winning eight consecutive Supersport races on his way to the 2023 championship but did not return as a rider in 2024. Now, he's working as a crew chief. And it's not just the riders. Walk through the paddock for several years and you see familiar faces among the crew chiefs and mechanics, but wearing different uniforms as they bounce from team to team, trying to keep a place in the game. In 2021, Jake Gagne won 17 of 20 Superbike races, including 16 in a row, and praised the work of his crew chief, Jon Cornwell, a former racer himself, as contributing to his dominating season. This year, Cornwell lost his job with the Attack Performance team.

And then there's the other way you can lose your ride, the one nobody wants to talk about. In racing, one small mistake can end a chance at a championship, end a season, end a career, or worse. This year's SuperMotocross season is a good example of that.

With the Supercross and motocross seasons just ended, and only the three-round playoffs left, 13 of the top 15 riders in the combined SuperMotocross standings have sat out multiple weekends of racing this year due to injuries or illnesses. Particularly in motocross, where careers are compressed and often over by age 30, any time lost is precious.

Add it up and it's clear. If you want job security, it would be hard to make a worse choice than going motorcycle racing, and that applies not just to the racers but also to anyone trying to start and fund a team or the mechanics and crew chiefs working long hours trying to find elusive fractions of a second.

"In this sport, you don't really know what you're going to get next," said Fong. "It could be over tomorrow."