Stories from the road: Ella Dreher
I reached out to Ella Dreher for an interview because I wanted to tell the story behind the racer. The person who lives in the gaps between race weekends. It's easy to forget there's a human under the helmet.
She golfs. She rides bicycles. She has a cat named Maverick who made an appearance four separate times during our call. What I did not expect was to learn that Ella is every coach's dream athlete.
She lives, breathes, eats, and dreams about racing. She is the most dedicated athlete I have interviewed in a hot minute.
Some context if you haven't been following. Ella is 16 and she races the #10 MP13 Racing/One Cure Racing MV Agusta F3 RR in MotoAmerica Supersport (MotoAmerica rider profile). She only became eligible for Supersport when she turned 16 at the end of February.
When I finally got her on a call, I didn't want to start with lap times, you can find those online. I wanted the playlist. To start, Ella is an Apple Music person, not Spotify. On the day we talked she'd been training to Snoop Dogg, MGK, Tupac, Xavier Wulf, and Deftones. I'll admit I was slightly impressed.
Dream car? She doesn't have one.
Dream truck? A King Ranch.
And when I finally pried a non-racing answer out of her about what she watches, it was Outer Banks, and she's genuinely bummed the seasons are done. A real human being behind the visor. I knew I'd get there eventually.
She's a junior, and she does school online. The plan is to stack extra classes and graduate early. "When you're online you can just focus more on your career and what you want to do," she told me.
Notice the word she used there. Career. Not sport. Not hobby. Career.
"You definitely sacrifice like literally everything," she said. Her friends tried to get her to go to homecoming, but it landed on the same weekend as the season finale in New Jersey. They understood. She keeps her circle small, by design, so she can focus on one thing.
2024 was her first MotoAmerica season, and although she is 100% professional, sibling rivalry runs deep, as she was quick to admit on our call, beating her brother was definitely on the list of goals for the season.
Ella breaks the track into pieces. She goes out for a session with one corner as the objective. Fix it, check it off, and suddenly there's room in her head to process the next thing. Qualifying is the piece she's working on right now, and she attacks it sector by sector from first practice all the way through to qualifying. On the 450 at home, it's fifteen minute sessions where she just grinds. "Soon enough you get better and better at qualifying," she said, "and you're able to go up and stack the grid more and be there more in the fight."
Race day has a routine. A couple of hours out, she sits down with the team, looks at data from practice and qualifying, and sets a goal for the race. About an hour before, the phone goes away. She stretches, she listens to music, and that's it. "You get yourself prepared by doing that and you just get focused on what you want to accomplish," she said. The nerves still show up, she is human after all.
So I asked her who she would be outside of racing, if it all stopped tomorrow. "I don't know what I would do with my life."
She's already had a preview. After Barber, she spent around two months in a wheelchair. "I was going insane," she said. "When you're used to doing something every day and then you go to sitting around the house all day, it definitely takes a huge toll on your mental aspect." Physical therapy was the only road back to the bike, and she worked it the same way she works a racetrack. Small wins, stacked up. Barely able to walk one week, a little more the next. She loves working out, so she'll tell you PT wasn't that bad.
Ella returned to the Supersport grid at COTA in September. Before that weekend she had ridden a motorcycle exactly three times: the MV twice and her 450 once. "Nobody rides that short amount of time before they're going to a race," she said. Her goal for Race 1 was simple. Finish the race, take it step by step. She finished sixteenth on Saturday, then fifteenth on Sunday, her best finish of the season, four months after breaking her pelvis. When I asked what made it click, she didn't talk about setup or tires. She talked about headspace.
I noticed as we spoke that she speaks about mindset more than she speaks about the physical parts of the sport. "You can't go out in a session and just start constantly doubting yourself because that's not gonna get you anywhere," she said. She wants to be like Marc Márquez, and mentioned that she admires that he can win so much and still race like he's hungry. Closer to home, she pointed to Josh Hayes, still running up front in Supersport in his fifties. At COTA, the same weekend Ella came back, Hayes finished fourth in both Supersport races.
A lot of women I've interviewed, including riders I talked to around the women's legacy lap at the Isle of Man, brought up Ella's name on their own. Many of them didn't throw a leg over a bike until their thirties, forties, or fifties. They see a teenager walking into a pro paddock and they light up. I asked Ella whether that ever sits with her. "There's not many girls in this sport," she said. "We need more girls in this sport, and girls can do as much as guys can do."
Ella started at six or seven on a 50cc, mostly out of spite. Her dad raced, Avery got a bike first, and she could not stand watching him ride without her. Growing up with brothers, she said, meant constant pushing and nobody babying her.
Racing alongside a sibling is its own animal. She and Avery are teammates again this year, and they share plans, data, and what they're struggling with. "You're not gonna tell him what pass you're gonna make on him," she said. "You're just gonna give it to him." Her approach to a rider she knows she's faster than is to sit behind them for a bit, not too long, study how they take each corner, then set up the move. "You can't make these baby moves," she said. "Everyone is so defensive in racing. You just have to go for it."
Racing alongside Avery for this long, she knows every one of her brother's weak points.
…But it also means he knows hers.
When I pushed for the thing that really gets her going, she was quick to answer. Speed. Going from a Talent Cup bike to one that runs 170 plus was a shock to the system in the best way. At Daytona, around the banking, she thinks she saw 173. "It feels like the walls are coming at you," she said.
If she has a favorite track, it's New Jersey, and she'll tell you exactly why. In 2024 she finished second in a Junior Cup race at NJMP, just over two tenths behind the winner, with Avery crossing the line 0.018 seconds behind her in third. "That's been my favorite track," she said, "just 'cause I beat my brother." The 2026 finale would be her first time riding it on a Supersport bike.
New Jersey did not make it easy. A nor'easter hammered the finale with torrential rain, high winds, and delays (Cycle News).
Obviously if you are reading this, you know my whole shtick is to share the Stories from the Road, but Ella doesn't ride on the road. At all. "I think I just know too much," she said. On a closed circuit there are air fences and a plan for when things go wrong. On the street? "There could be a sinkhole." She's from Florida. She's not wrong.
Before we wrapped, I asked her about helmet sponsors, since that's how I got connected to her in the first place. "Racing is not cheap," she said, "and a little help definitely goes a long way. Just knowing that people are willing to help you for doing what you love."
Thank you to Ella, and to her mentor John Ludwig for setting this up.
And to Maverick, for eventually letting us finish.
Takeaways:
For new riders. One corner per session, check it off, then move on to the next.
For experienced riders. Respect what experience taught you; she won't ride the street because she knows what can go wrong.
For all of us. There aren't many girls on the grid, and helmet sponsors and people who show up keep the next generation racing.
CAT TAX BELOW....
