“At the start of the season, I was undecided if I was going to retire or not, and I knew if I got this 10th championship, there was a good chance I would,” Jared Mees told NBC Sports after finishing the 2024 American Flat Track schedule with three straight wins, four consecutive championships, and his 10th title overall.
Ending his career on such a high note was more than two decades in the making. To put that in perspective, it means he has won nearly half of the titles he set his sights on.
Mees won his first championship in 2009, followed by titles in 2012, 2014, and 2015.
But his career really took a turn in 2017 with a new bike from Indian Motorcycles. And it was fitting that he would end it as the OEM leaves the sport. Because of new rules for 2025 that call for production-only engines, the FTR750 is ineligible to compete.
“We start in 2017, and carrying to the close of my career, I have to give a lot of success to the Indian Motorcycle company, and the bike they built, the FTR750, has been a huge part of my successful career,” Mees said. “It was a state-of-the-art motorcycle that launched at the end of 2016, and I won six of the championships on that motorcycle.”
The success was immediate. Mees and Indian won their maiden race at Daytona International Speedway, followed by another win the following week in Atlanta, Georgia, and Mees continued to stand on the podium in every race he entered that year. By the time the 2017 season ended at Perris (Calif.) Auto Speedway, he had amassed 10 victories with an advantage of nearly 100 points over second-place Bryan Smith.
“Obviously, the first championship and the first race win are the toughest, but you look back on it, and there are ones that highlight,” Mees said. “The 2017 Daytona TT was really a special moment because we went into it with a brand-new bike. Teams like Harley Davidson revamped their platform with their XG750.
“[In 2017] the sport was getting rebirthed and changed around to where we were running twins everywhere and that was the first time a twin had been on a TT even since the 80s. So the very first time, the season opener, the first time the Indian is hitting the track for the full season and we go out there and win and the second one as well.”
Another 10 wins in 2018 produced another championship and then Mees faced stiff competition from his teammate Briar Bauman, who won the titles in 2019 and 2020.
Mees was close behind Bauman in both seasons, finishing second each time. He won the most races in 2019, but a couple of poor races denied him the title. In 2020, he was nine points behind Bauman, with one victory separating them at the close.
The 2021 championship was one of those special moments for dirt bike racing fans. The finale featured a winner-take-all scenario that was decided late in the race when Bauman clipped a hay bale on the exit of Turn 4 and crashed heavily. Bauman was leading at the time and finished 10th; Mees finished second and launched the incredible run that ended with a record-setting 10th championship.
Making his championship more dramatic, Mees spent most of the 2021 season riding with an injury suffered in a Motocross training accident.
“That one was with a lot of heart,” Mees said.
But if the first win and championship is memorable, how much more so are the last ones? Mees ended the 2024 season with six wins, twice that of his two closest competitors, Brandon Robinson and Dallas Daniels, with three apiece. And the difference was the final three races when Mees swept a doubleheader at the Springfield Mile and won the finale at Lake Ozark Speedway in Eldon, Missouri.
That was his 78th career win.
“[Retiring is] tough in a way, but super rewarding that we ended the season and my career like you couldn’t write it any better,” Mees said. “We won the last three races of the year, won the championship — went out on top. It’s pretty hard to write that up.”
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