Sammy Halbert Talks Up & Down 2013 AMA Pro Flat Track presented by J&P Cycles Grand National Championship Season

Sammy Halbert had a career's worth of problems in the 2013 AMA Pro Flat Track presented by J&P Cycles Grand National Championship season, in spite of the fact that he still managed to pull off a great win in his first return to the sport at the Stockton Half-Mile back on May 11.

After returning from off-season injuries which kept him out of rounds 1&2 at Daytona, an event he has all but dominated over the course of the last few seasons, Slammin' Sammy blew away the competition at round 3 in California in what was his 'first' return to the sport at Stockton.

As the season wore on, Sammy pulled off two 5th-place finishes at the Hagerstown Half-Mile in early July and the Sacramento Mile in late July.  When the series headed to the northwest corner of the continental U.S. for his hometown round at the Castle Rock TT, Halbert came away with a non-typical (for him) 8th-place finish.

But the rest of his season all but came to a screeching halt when the series crossed the country to land at the Peoria TT on August 11 (shown above on his #7 Fredericktown Yamaha/Van's Yamaha/Flat Track Live-sponsored YZ450F in an early practice session) when he went barrel rolling off of the jump during his heat race #2 and landed on his head-literally.

Taking time to mend due to a concussion suffered as a result of that crash, the Washington State native and man who had battled for the championship over the course of the last few seasons with title rivals Jared Mees and Jake Johnson, came back to the track with another great effort at the Santa Rosa Mile, where he qualified in the 3rd-place position and promptly went out and won his heat and took home a 4th-place effort in the Dash for Cash before the event was called due to rain before the National main had even completed two laps.

With the season-finale just 13 days later in Pomona, Halbert was running at the front when he got spit off of his #7 South East H-D XR750 and took out the airfence and hit the dirt, ending his season with an rough 17th-place finish for the last event of the year and a 13th-place finish in the final season's points tally.

Sammy got the chance to pen a great article for Cycle News a couple of weeks back and talked about his hard year of knocks and knacks and what he will be doing in the off-season as he prepares to return to what will surely be his usual fast and top form for the 2014 season ahead.  And you can bet that the hard and tough fighter will be ready to do battle at the front again in his return to top form.

You can also check out more on Sammy and keep up with his off-season regimen via his Facebook page to see what else he has going during the few months ahead.

As always, we wish Sammy the best during the off season and will look forward to seeing him back in the saddle fighting it out at the front during the 2014 AMA Pro Flat Track Grand National Championship season!