Romano finally getting his dream chance at supercross with Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki

Nick Romano is a 21-year-old racer desperately trying to stay healthy and off the injured reserve list. Highly touted going back to his rookie year in the sport of 2022, Romano, as much as any racer of his generation, has struggled mightily from injuries and bad luck. A member of the Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing organization from 2019 through 2024, injuries put an end to his run there and Romano joined Phoenix Racing Honda for the 2025 season... only to damaged his knee at the 250SX East Region opening round at Tampa. Undaunted, the New York native has refused to give up.

“We’re back on the mend, I guess you could say,” explains Romano. “We’re back training, I’ve got this awesome opportunity to go racing for Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki and for Mitch [Payton] and his guys. It’s a dream come true.”

So how did the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki opportunity came about?

“There was nothing really in the works, you know?” admits Romano. “I had a rough couple years. Throughout my amateur days, I was Kawasaki Team Green and teammates with Ryder DiFrancesco and Jett Reynolds and Stilez Robertson and that kind of whole era. I kind of branched off from Kawasaki Team Green and ended up at Star Racing Yamaha for a couple years. I just got hurt and hurt and hurt and then went the privateer route last year and again, got injured. So it was just a rough couple years.

“Me and Mitch Payton have always had a relationship from the Kawasaki days. I’ve always kept in touch and then fast forward to about October of last year, I was without a dirt bike for the first time in my life. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do. I’m tired of getting hurt. I was just in a weird headspace. As any athlete or dirt bike racer knows, it’s highs and lows, right? What I’ve kind of learned from that is you can’t let the highs get too high and you can’t let the lows get too low. When you’re stuck in that dark hole, I guess you could say, you’re really lost. You don’t really know who you are as a person. You’re battling injuries and you have the fans and you see this and that on social media and it’s just tough.

"I want to give a shout out to Real Deal Rob and Jason and Stacy Baker at Moto Sandbox because that’s where I trained back in Florida. I think without them, I probably wouldn’t have kept going. They pushed me to go get a bike. That led me to come out to California and do my boot camp, because I was severely out of shape. I still didn’t really have any plans. I just was out of shape from the year off. When I’m sitting around not training and not riding, you kind of lose your mind, right? I needed to come back to SoCal and really get back in the environment.

“So I came out here and everyone was like, ‘Hey man, go talk to Mitch Payton while you’re out here. You’re only 30 minutes away. Go pop in and say what’s up?’ That all led me to go have a couple meetings with Mitch. Like I said, me and Mitch have always been cool and always will be. As everyone knows, Mitch Payton is a legend, right? What he’s built, and the team he has, and the championships he has… Honestly, I still get nervous talking to him.

"A couple conversations led to, ‘Well, man, we can’t do anything with you, but I want you to go back home and start training.’ I had come off a year of just being off the bike. I mentioned that to Mitch and he said, ‘Dude, no. I have bikes for you.’ He sold me a showroom floor bike for a really good deal and Mitch absolutely hooked it up. He put a pipe on it, he put clamps on it, he put a Hinson clutch in it, he put a high compression piston in it. He made it a safe bike for me to go and train on. Looking back on it, I appreciate that from Mitch.

I got to Florida sometime in November. In the meantime, I started riding Levi Kitchen’s 450. So I went home and I rode Levi’s 450 for about two and a half weeks. And then my bike showed up and I put my head down. I got on supercross around the second week of December. From there, I kind of got the mojo back going. I was enjoying riding. I was doing things the way I wanted to do them for the first time in my career.

"I don’t slack any of the hard work or any of that stuff. It was an enjoyable couple months through December and January. I just did the things how I wanted to do them. I really took my time getting my laps back. I wasn’t rushed. I still had no plans of racing. Obviously along those couple months I was reaching out to a bunch of teams, as anyone would. I just kept getting told no, no, no, no. Looking back on that, it really fired me up in a way of like, ‘OK, I still got it. I know my group of people know I still have it. I’m going to do this for me and me only.’

“Around Anaheim 1 and the second week of January, I still had no calls. I kept my head down and kept training. It was tough. It was a tough couple months because I didn’t know what I was doing and I was doing 70 percent to 80 percent of my own bike work. It was tough and it was long. You also had to fit in your gym and your training and your runs and your road bike rides. It was a taxing couple months, but I had one goal in mind and that was to get myself back on a factory-level team. I didn’t know how I was going to get that opportunity again, but I just out my mind to it and I didn’t look away from it.

“I did get a couple calls to go race on the West Coast on some satellite teams and stuff like that, but I know my capabilities and I didn’t want to be on a privateer team again. I think a lot of people thought I was crazy, honestly. People close to me and my family and everyone, they were like, ‘Dude, do you know how hard it is to get back on an A-level team? You’re not racing. You’re only as good as your last race.’ My last race was in 2024, realistically. I had my mind and me eyes set on this one prize, and I wasn’t going to stop until I got it.”

And then Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki team racer Drew Adams went down at the Daytona Supercross and was out with an injured thumb.

“Unfortunately Drew went down and I reached out to Mitch the Monday after Daytona. He was like, ‘Look man, we may need you.’ I said, ‘Dude, I’m here.’

“I got the call Thursday, the week after Daytona, and I packed my bags and I flew out to SoCal on Saturday. It’s been about eight days since then and dude, dream come true, honestly.”

Romano is now back to work with testing and training laps for Kawasaki.

“It feels great,” he said with a smile. “When I was a kid, I literally dreamed of racing for Mitch Payton and Kawasaki. To get the opportunity to be back on an A-level team is awesome, but to be with Mitch makes it one of the best weeks of my life.

"Monday was my first day on the bike. It was my 21st birthday. It went incredibly well. Mitch and his team and everyone there are just so on point. It just got better and better. By the end of day one and after five or six hours in testing, I felt like I had been on the bike for a couple of years. Everything just went so well.

"I rode four days this week. Tuesday went well when I broke in my race bike. I’m confident. I know what the bike is going to do. As everyone knows, Mitch doesn’t play games and he’s here to win. I’m here to win. The goal doesn’t change.

"I’m excited for the future. This week we’ve got a couple more days of riding and then off to the races we go again. I’m looking forward to it.”