ROBINSON ON THE REBOUND

No current Grand National Championship contender has been such a constant force at the front for so long as Brandon Robinson.

The Mission Roof Systems Harley-Davidson ace has been winning races and scoring podiums at the pinnacle of global motorcycle dirt track racing for a good decade-and-a-half.

Over that span, Robinson has tallied up 17 wins and 51 podiums in Mission AFT SuperTwins competition, good enough to place him inside the top 25 all-time in both categories. He’s finished inside the championship top five on eight separate occasions – including five times inside the top three – and garnered Grand National Championship runner-up honors in 2024.

All of that makes his protracted absence from the Progressive American Flat Track scene due to injury all the more noticeable, even as Harley-Davidson has continued to stand tall thanks to the combined efforts of Briar Bauman, Kody Kopp, et al.

Robinson has been out of action for nearly two months at this point as he continues to recover from the injuries he sustained in a terrifying heat race incident at Ventura Raceway in late April.

Moments after starting from the front row, Robinson found himself squeezed between two competitors and was subsequently thrown over the bars following contact. It only got worse from there. In the immediate aftermath, another racer with nowhere to maneuver ramped over the fallen Robinson while the crashed machine of a fourth slammed into him from behind.

He then laid motionless for an excruciating stint before getting loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital.

It’s a scary memory for all who remember it. Mercifully, Robinson himself is not counted among that number.

He said, “I kind of vaguely remember the warm-up lap, and then I just remember waking up at the hospital. That’s about it. Obviously, there’s a period of time where I don't recall anything. I just kind of woke up, and I was like, ‘Aww shit, this isn’t good.’”

And he’s been on the mend ever since. Asked for an update, Robinson said, “I’m doing okay. I’m slowly but surely making progress. My injuries are such that there’s not really a timeline, unfortunately.”

“I had a pretty severe concussion and two small brain bleeds. But that's all going to heal. That's going to be good in time. We kind of have a three-month timeline before everything's going to be pretty good. And at that point we're going to have some more CT scans just to make sure everything is all kosher.

“The arm is honestly a bigger issue than my head, surprisingly. I have a partial brachial plexus injury, which causes a lack of sensation in my right arm. So pretty much from my shoulder down to my wrist is, in spots, really, really off, especially from my elbow to my wrist.

“It’s slowly getting better, and I’m slowly getting some feeling back. But it's just such a slow process. Just like little things. As I do get some feeling back, I start feeling some pain in certain areas and then in certain areas I start feeling better.

“Like I said, there’s not really a timeline for it. In three months, we'll do a double check and start tracing some nerves and seeing how the progress is going. But yeah, it's a wild injury. I've never really dealt with a nerve injury like this before.

“I’m in physical therapy a couple times a week and just doing stuff at home. I’m doing what I can as far as the arm. And it turned out like five weeks later, I found out my wrist had a fracture in it too, which didn’t help.”