Especially when contrasted with Tomac and Musquin’s zero point scores, the 450 podium fight really became a battle of patience. Anderson took the win ahead of Ken Roczen—on the podium and leading laps in his second race back from last year’s terrible arm injury—and Justin Barcia, who starts the year with back-to-back podiums. All three riders have shown a penchant for aggression and fire through the years, but on a broken-down Houston track, all three showed reserves of patience to deliver solid results. In Anderson’s case, he had speed to burn in practice and his heat, but didn’t show his best stuff through the early laps of the main event. Barcia holeshot the race ahead of Roczen, and they went at it for a lap before Roczen took the lead. Barcia stuck with Roczen and they actually pulled away a bit from Anderson. In the second half of the race, though, Anderson let the race come to him. He found his groove and passed both riders to go get the lead. Anderson said the lines were really tough to figure out. He tried finding new ones and realized they were not working, so he just went back to the main race line and started hammering that. Once he did, he picked up the pace and went through Barcia and Roczen. Anderson has always been fast and aggressive, but his all-around game this weekend—good starts, patience, line selection and more—serve notice that he has the tools to win this championship.

“It’s important for us to stay calm, but it’s hard when you see the win in sight. That’s something you have to learn. That’s out of my character to be patient. It’s cool that I was able to execute that tonight. At the same time, these guys are going to be going fast, so sometimes you have to go for it.”

Roczen led at the halfway mark and really looked ready to win the race. He wasn’t at all disappointed that Anderson ran him down. If anyone knows how critical it is to play the long game, it’s Roczen.

“It was okay last weekend, but this was a really good weekend for us. I think where I have the most fun is just rolling out and hanging out with the HRC Team. It feels great to have two riders here and to get on the podium. Justin and I had some good battles and it was clean and it was fun. In the first couple of laps I had to protect my insides and I couldn’t separate myself at all. Then from lap two or three or so I started opening up my turns a bit and I could pull away a little bit. My mindset is really the same. You can’t freak out and get all crazy and be super aggressive. Mentally I’m going to stay the same all year and try not to make the big mistake.”

Barcia’s three-three results so far are rock solid, but he showed a little bit of his old Bam Bam style with some big mistakes. The difference is, he smoothed back out and fixed them. At one point, Honda HRC’s Cole Seely passed Barcia to take away third, but Barcia settled down and got him back.

“My mechanic told me I had about 100 mistakes at Anaheim so if we could just have 50 tonight we’d be doing a lot better,” said Barcia. “I feel like I had 50 mistakes. I had a few back-to-back and yeah that’s frustrating but I think I calmed it down and pulled it back pretty good. 100 mistakes last week, 50 this week, maybe 25 next week.”

“I was having a good ride,” continued Barcia. “Just watching Kenny and what he was doing and adapting to the track because it was changing every lap. I just kind of struggled in the middle but made a decent charge at the end to get back into third.”

Seely ended up fourth, just missing the chance to put two Hondas on  the podium. Overall, though, he rode well all night, just missing a heat race win as he battled his teammate Roczen to the end there.

Behind that, a battle of wills between Autotrader.com/Yoshimura Suzuki’s Weston Peick and SmarTop Motoconcepts Honda’s Justin Brayton. Peick started up front and lost spots to Anderson and Seely, and then found Brayton locked on him the whole way. For the final 17 minutes of the main, they pushed each other to the max, but Peick hung on for his second-straight fifth. Peick and Brayton have proven “best of the rest” at the first two races.

“It was a good race,” said Peick. “Track was super technical and super rough and I’m happy with my result. We made some good bike changes this weekend. Had some pressure from Brayton there, he was riding super smooth and super good. I just stuck my ground.”

Peick has nailed two good starts this year and he says that benefits him as he tries to become a weekly podium guy instead of a top-five type. He’s getting to see what the lead riders do, their intensity, and he says in a few weeks he hopes to be able to stick with them the entire way. Brayton, meanwhile, took sixth and says he and his bike are as good now as it has ever been in his entire career.

Brayton took sixth ahead of Blake Baggett, who looked better this weekend on his Rocky Mountain ATV/MC KTM. Then came Broc Tickle, who ended up as the only rider working out of the Red Bull KTM truck in the main. Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Josh Grant and GEICO Honda’s Jeremy Martin rounded out the top ten, ahead of Malcolm Stewart, who made his season debut as a fill-in rider with Autotrader.com/Yoshimura Suzuki. Monster Energy/Knich Yamaha Factory Racing’s Cooper Webb had a disappointing night, starting about last and struggling to come through, taking 12^th.

The KTM squad released a statement from Musquin. “After qualifying third today, I went down hard in the whoops in my heat race. I landed on my left shoulder and felt really beat up. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to line up for the rest of night. I'm really disappointed about that given the team and I were in a good place after our win last weekend. But I will get checked up as soon as I get home and will know more in the next few days. Supercross is a longer season so I'm hopeful I will be able to line up in Anaheim 2.”

The early laps of the 250 race were crazy. Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Joey Savatgy led with points leader Shane McElrath and Adam Cianciarulo in tow. They went at it! Cianciarulo got past McElrath but when he found the door open for a pass on Savatgy, he decided to turn even sharper to avoid running into his teammate. He lost the front and went down. Later, Cianciarulo would crash again—it takes patience to learn patience in the 250s.

Savatgy looked to have the race in hand after that, but then Plessinger showed up on the radar logging a huge charge.

“I’ve made mistakes in the past maybe doing things or doing obstacles I shouldn’t do,” said Savatgy. “Tonight was one of those nights were I was just going as fast as I could and Aaron was just going faster. Track was brutal tonight so I just tried to minimize the mistakes.”

“The first few laps were pretty crazy,” said Plessinger. “I’m not sure how I managed to get all the way up through there but on lap three I knew I was fifth or sixth place and I was catching these guys pretty significantly. I just put my head down and charged forward. This track was really sketchy, it was my kind of track. Long legs.”

Rookie Chase Sexton, of GEICO Honda, was solid on the difficult track, finishing third after passing McElrath and the downed Cianciarulo.

"I’m pretty new to all this, just had to get a flow and try not to make mistakes,” said Sexton. “To be honest, I kind of expected to be pretty good this season, but last year I crashed in Atlanta and that was pretty tough. I felt pretty good this off season but this podium did come a little early.”