Our good friend and legendary media guy in USA, Eri Johnson caught up with Brian Deegan who is enjoying being the patriarch of the Deegan family and the passion and commitment his family displays in going motor racing.

“You hear a lot of people saying, "Oh, the Deegans are the American racing family." It’s cool to see," he says. "I mean, the whole family races and we all revolve around that, but it’s cool to see [daughter] Hailie and [sons] Haiden and Hudson all have a love and passion for not just sport and not just racing but working hard and accomplishing goals.”

Brian Deegan ghosted his Team Moto XXX Suzuki over the finish line immediately after winning the Los Angeles Coliseum round of the 1997 AMA 125cc West Region Supercross Series. Along the way the Nebraska-turned-Californian claimed 16 X Games medals in various motorsports disciplines, 12 coming in freestyle motocross and an additional four medals coming from rally car competition.

One of the most brash and outspoken alternative sports athletes to ever fire an engine to life, he’s also the father of young American motocross sensation Haiden Deegan, Indy NXT and NASCAR racer Hailie Deegan and up-and-coming minicycle racer Hudson Deegan. Now based back in North Carolina, Brian Deegan recently took some time out to talk about his family, motorsport and just what might come next

“We have a house up at the lake and it’s in North Carolina and in a real pretty area,” said Deegan a few days out from AMA Pro MX round set for Southwick, Mass., that he and his son Haiden will attend. “We have a Nautique boat and we just go out on the boat and go wake surfing. We have some eFoil electric surfboards that we ride that are fun. We go hiking and we have some cool waterfalls up by our house. We do most everything together as a family. We’re all usually together. We have a moto track out here that we ride. It’s a sand track that we’re using to get ready for Southwick. It’s about 10 degrees cooler here. It’s not as humid and hot here, so you can get more accomplished up here out if the heat.”

Deegan continued on to explained why the formerly California-based family have now put stakes in the ground back in North Carolina.

“Hailie’s NASCAR racing is what took us back there,” Deegan he said. “We sold our other house we had in Mooresville. That’s where we thought our home base was going to be until Haiden ended up going to Star Racing in Cairo, Georgia and testing the bikes. We knew we had to be there to really win championships and stuff. We ended up selling the house in Mooresville and moving to Tallahassee for Haiden’s racing.”

A move certainly illustrating the Deegan family’s absolute commitment to going after and attempting to go after and achieve goals and objectives in motorsports.

“Oh yeah. I think a lot of people don’t understand the full commitment of it all,” said Deegan. “Fortunately, for me, I was able to have a good career. With my wife Marissa and I investing in the right things and financially making good decisions, which has allowed us to follow our kids with their goals. We were able to get up and move the whole family to Florida.

"Marissa had to move away from her life in SoCal. As a woman you have your yoga, you have your hair and your nails and you have all your spots and places you like to eat, and then you literally uproot and leave and move to Tallahassee, which is a completely different world. For me, I was able to adapt because I am at the motocross track most of the time, but she’s not. It’s a big commitment. More than people know.

"And then I have to balance that as a husband, as a father and as a leader of the household. I have to balance all that. That’s another deal on top of trying to help Haiden win championships. Hudson is 15 and so he is bouncing from school to school, which doesn’t help his education and his life. You know he sacrifices, too. It’s a lit just for Haiden to be the best guy, but in return, if my kids are all-in and they show that every moment of the day and they’re working towards winning or being the best they can be, then we will support that.”

He says Haiden was all-in right from the onset of minicycle racing and amateur motocross.

“He was a good amateur,” Deegan said. “But there is a lot of good amateurs. I don’t want to mention names, but there were a lot of other amateur phenoms that were winning everything. So why did they graduate up and have success? There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle and I feel like that there is a whole story in that alone. I feel like I could write a book on how parents work with their kids. I think it’s a lot of hurdles. It’s a lot of good and a lot of bad and a lot of mistakes and a lot of things done right. There is definitely a system to it.

“You know when I was doing the freestyle thing, no we didn’t really plan on our kids racing dirt bikes. When I got out of racing in the late 1990s, I walked away from the sport and I felt like I didn’t have the best support and I didn’t have the best exit. I kind of had a bad taste in my mouth, so I didn’t really even go back to it at all. For me to think my kid was going to be this next generation of racer… You know, I went all-in to freestyle and the X Games and action sports. I let my kid start riding at a young age for fun. I didn’t really have much of an expectation to go back to racing. Haiden wanted to try racing, so we took him to the local track when he was six years old. I hadn’t been back to the local track in probably over a decade. We went back and he was getting so good at it, so we just kept going with it and it snowballed from there.”

Hailie Deegan jumped straight from NASCAR to Indy NXT. James Black/IMS Photo

Leaving the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Indy NXT in 2025, Hailie Deegan is now seven starts into an open-wheel racing career.

“Hailie moved from NASCAR and Trucks over to Indy [NXT]. She jumped in there and there is a lot of fast guys and it is a big learning curve for her," Deegan acknowledged. "The one good thing about it is that you do get a lot of seat time. She came into NASCAR right when the COVID deal hit and that cut all the practice and all the seat time and it really affected her development. She still wants to race and we’ve got to support that. She’s still having fun racing and still wants to do it. She’s 23, still pretty young in the racing scene.”

How does her father feel about switching into open-wheel racing?

“Like I said, I’m always supportive if they’re all in,” he replied. “I’m backing it. The racing is the main part and you have to go all in to be the best you can be at it. It is nerve racking. It’s scary. She’s racing an open-wheel race car at 190 miles per hour. Whether you’re in the front or the back, you’re still in a race car going that fast. It’s still dangerous!

"That part kind of makes me nervous, but I think as long as she enjoys it, I think it’s one shot at it, you know? She’s still real good with it. I’ve asked her if she really wants to continue racing or does she want to move on. She wants to race.

"Like I said, it’s a tough road and it would be cool to see her get more support as a young female racer. I really wanted her to go do the F1 Academy deal that they were doing with the girls there. I thought that was a cool opportunity. Maybe she will. I don’t know. She felt like she needed to get some more open-wheel seat time before she did that, which I agree. She just started in it. I think give her a season there and kind of see where she is at.”

Marissa Deegan, the matriarch of the Deegan racing family, also has been fully supportive of her daughter and two sons in their racing ventures.

“Marissa is supportive of it,” said Deegan. “We’re working on some big stuff with Haiden. We’re helping him build his own compound down in there in Georgia. He’ll have his own facility and all his own stuff because that’s where he is going to be for a while with Yamaha and all that, so she’s heavily involved in all that. We do real estate. We’re into building houses and selling real estate. I mean she’s pretty active and a go-getter and she likes staying busy. She’s had a good attitude about it all. She’s been supportive of it all the way, which helps. I think it would be pretty difficult if it was the opposite.”

And there is always family time within the Deegan household.

“The one thing we do get to do is sit down as a family and watch all our old YouTube videos and stuff,” said Deegan. “The main reason we do the YouTube and all the social media is because it allows us to tell our story and to influence people in the things that we think are important. With the internet, the majority of it is not great family content, so I feel like we are a doing a service of putting out a good story. That’s why we do it. And we are maximizing the marketing of racing. That’s part of the game. We’re trying to bring in new fans to the sport, and with that comes more money for everyone, really. But yeah, sometimes my old stuff will come up and it’s pretty funny. The kids laugh about it.”

And all along the way comes good, bad and ugly. Brian Deegan and his family are keenly aware of the ups and downs of motor racing.

“I feel like if you’re going to do professional sports, your job is to go win races and win events and to also promote your partners and sponsors. And that’s through having the most influence, the most views and the most popularity you can," he said. "That comes with a price, right? When the good days are good, yeah, everyone supports it and there is a big and positive wave. It’s very predictable. It’s the same in all sports. When you have you good days, everyone supports you and there is a lot of good stuff. When you have your bad days, it’s the other way, too. You always have that wave. So you have to have thick skin and you have to be OK with it.

"At first it was a little difficult, but now it’s super-predictable. I guess it has almost lost its emotion for me because it is so predictable. That’s fine. We’re here. We’ve chosen that path, so you have to be able to handle it, you know?”

“Haiden has got his own personality and I don’t try and change that or tell him, ‘Hey, this is how you should dress and this is what you should say,’" his dad says.

For now, Brian's full focus is on Haiden and the racing journey he is on.

“Haiden has got his own personality and I don’t try and change that or tell him, ‘Hey, this is how you should dress and this is what you should say,’ He noted. "I’ve kind of got to let him be his own person and I think that’s the right way. He knows what is cool and what the current styles are more than I do. For Haiden, his racing legitimizes him. He also has this YouTube personality and some people love it and some people hate it. At the end of the day, though, it’s a game. It’s like, how do you win the game? Winning the game is just being able to be involved with our kids all the time and kind of being where we want to be when we want to be there.”

Asked what today's Haiden might have thought of his father back in the 2000s when he was the overlord of the Metal Mulisha and trying to score as many X Games medals as possible, Brian said the current racing world is very different.

“Well, if you think about the top racers at the time back when I was competing, we were almost two different things," he said. "You had the top moto guys and you had the top action sports guys and we didn’t really hang out. It was like they were two totally different things. I don’t know if Haiden and I would have even crossed paths too much. It’s two different worlds, you know? Haiden has always been into action sports, so who knows? I’m sure Haiden and me would have got along fine.”