Seemingly every year someone comes out of the woodwork in the MotoAmerica series opener and it’s usually in the Junior Cup class. Sometimes they have staying power and sometimes they fade away. This year’s opening round surprise at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta was a diminutive 16-year-old named Matthew Chapin, from Damascus, Maryland. And there doesn’t appear to be any fade in this one.
Chapin made his Junior Cup debut in the final two rounds of the 2023 season at Pittsburgh International Race Complex and New Jersey Motorsports Park with a best finish of sixth. So, nothing that would make your head turn. Thus, the surprise when he raced to victory in the first of two races in the opening round at Road Atlanta. And the bigger surprise when Chapin raced his way to the 2024 MotoAmerica Junior Cup Championship. Turns out, we weren’t alone in being surprised.
“I knew it was possible, but I was pretty doubtful that it would actually happen,” Chapin said of taking the title. “It was my first year doing a full MotoAmerica season. It just didn’t feel like it was right there for the taking. I went into the season thinking more about top 10 finishes and top fives. I really didn’t expect to win the first race of the season or anything like that.”
After winning on Saturday, the two riders on either side of Chapin in the press conference (Ryan Wolfe and Yandel Medina) were openly hoping for Sunday rain. Chapin, the smallest of the three, shook his head. He wanted no part of the rain. Sure enough, rain came as expected and Chapin went from winning on Saturday to finishing seventh on Sunday. But there was no panic from Chapin’s side.
“Honestly, I was super pumped at finishing seventh because I had like no rain experience going into this season, so to get a top 10 in MotoAmerica, in the rain, it felt great.”
What followed were two mediocre (for him) finishes of fifth and sixth in round two at Barber Motorsports Park. Then everything changed. Chapin went on a charge, winning six of the last eight races to take the title by a whopping 81 points.
So, what changed? Was it a growing level of confidence? Experience?
“It was good mixture of both,” Chapin said. “The experience helped a lot, but I think the change for me was just my confidence going into the race weekends. Also, I was frustrated with myself because I knew I had the pace at Barber, but I just couldn’t put it together.”
Wise beyond his years, Chapin showed what other champions in Junior Cup had shown before him: an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time to win races from a pack of six to eight other riders. You can call it luck if it happens once or twice, but when it happens in six of eight races it’s a skill set that separates you from the others.
“It’s just learning when you need to be patient and when you have the pace to get away,” Chapin said. “If the guys in front of you have more pace than you, then I want to be leading the race. During Road America, race two in the dry, I felt that I could control the pace more and just have everybody behind me vs. race one at Road America. In race one, I realized that if I was patient enough, I could keep drafting up to them on every single straightaway and I didn’t have to make any moves or anything. I could just sit there and not worry about crashing or anything like that.”
Pace and patience. He used them both in the two races and won both.
Chapin recently turned 17 and is a junior in a public high school, but not many who walk the halls with him know of his accomplishments.
“Only really my close friends know what I do,” Chapin said. “I don’t really put myself out there like that in front of all the other kids because I honestly don’t care. I don’t need to brag about it, if that makes sense.”
Well, there is that one teacher.
“My math teacher is a big motocross guy, so he knows the MotoAmerica series and all that, so he knew who I was when I went into this class and that was really cool,” Chapin said.
Chapin first threw his leg over a motorcycle when he was three years old and that turned into the start of a racing career. When he was 10, Chapin made the move from dirt to road racing via the New Jersey MiniGP series. Next up was the North America Talent Cup and then a stint in CCS and WERA in 2023 before he made his MotoAmerica debut at PittRace at the end of the season.
It was at PittRace in 2023 that the Chapins decided to commit to a full season of MotoAmerica in 2024.
“It was for sure during Pittsburgh that we realized that this was what we wanted to be doing in 2024,” Chapin said. “In the first practice, I was third and then in qualifying one I was like seventh. In qualifying two, I was pulling out of the pits, and I got tangled up with another rider on his fast lap. I don’t really know what happened, I just remember that he hit the back of me and I was all the way on the left of the track as far as I could go. I think it was just one of those things where he couldn’t’ see me and that kinda screwed my qualifying two. But I knew I had the pace to be with the front guys because I had like the third fastest lap of the race. That was a huge confidence builder for me – just knowing that I had the lap times to be up there. I just needed to put my weekend together.”
In addition to showing that he had the speed and consistency to win the title this year, Chapin also showed that he was riding well within his skill set as he only crashed once.
“The only crash I had was in qualifying two at Mid-Ohio,” he said. “I don’t even really know what happened. I just tucked the front, and it was gone.”
So, what’s next for Chapin?
“I can’t mention any teams or anything like that, but I will say that we are in the negotiation process for Twins Cup next year,” Chapin said. “We’re trying to figure it out. There are two or three teams that are giving me offers and we will take whatever the best one is.”
Although it’s a bit surprising that Chapin isn’t going to jump into the new 2025 Parts Unlimited Talent Cup, you can tell he’s thought things through and is doing what he thinks is best for his career.
“I’m getting a little bit older,” Chapin said. “I just turned 17 and my family kinda sees it (Talent Cup) as a step in the wrong direction if that makes sense. I’m getting kinda old to go to Spain and all that to race Moto3 and do all that stuff on the (Honda) NSFs and all that. We just thought the better option was to step up to bigger bikes and see where the path takes us.
“I kinda want to head in the World Superbike direction a little bit. I think all of this just happens as time goes on. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be unhappy with being a MotoAmerica rider, but my biggest goal is to make it to World Superbike.”
