Saturday Night Live: San Diego

The main event ended up being quite a roller coaster. Marvin Musquin holeshot and led for three laps before being passed by Chase Sexton. Sexton, 22, had yet to win a 450SX main event coming into the night despite high praise throughout the off-season that he could be expected to contend for this championship. Well, once Sexton slipped by Musquin on lap four, he put together a beautiful 17-minute display after that of why he had such praise. If you take away everything going on behind Sexton, it appeared a rather straight forward race.

For Chase Sexton, San Diego was finally all the steps he’d been making in his program to figure out the 450SX class coming to fruition. An early lead turned into a big lead, and at the end of it all was Sexton’s first career 450SX victory.

“I still can’t believe, it, honestly,” said Sexton. “This is a dream come true, I’ve come close so many times. Didn’t make any mistakes and finally got it done. Like I said, dream come true. After all the hard stuff I went through last year, to get to this point this year is unbelievable. We did a lot of hard work on the bike this week with Honda. I was at the test track until 4 p.m. testing, and it paid off. Looking forward to going back to work, and to getting another one of these. It’s addicting.”

The elation for Sexton was couple with frustration for last week’s winner Jason Anderson. The last five minutes of the race might night have been smooth sailing for Sexton if Jason Anderson was able to have a say. He wasn’t though. Anderson charged forward from a mid-pack start to put Ken Roczen on the ground for third and move around Eli Tomac for second with seven minutes left. A lap later, Anderson had taken Sexton’s seven second lead down to less than six seconds and he was on the charge. Unfortunately, a lap after that, Anderson’s bike began smoking heavily. We have heard that the reason for this was actually the radiator cap somehow popping off. Anderson immediately went into salvage mode and was no longer doing all the rhythm sections. He quickly dropped from second to ninth where he would ultimately finish. In a matter of moments, Anderson went from the clear points leader to sixth in points.

The new points leader instead comes in the form of Monster Energy/Star Yamaha Racing’s Eli Tomac. Tomac has been slowly working into things aboard his new Yamaha and followed up his sixth at Anaheim and fourth at Oakland with a second on Saturday in San Diego. With all the crazy flip flopping in points, Tomac’s 6-4-2 is good enough for a one-point championship lead now over Sexton and reigning 450SX champion Cooper Webb. What made the difference on Saturday specifically for Tomac? A better start.

“Yeah, so nice [to get a good start], I just feel like I was able to be in the game this time,” said Tomac. “I came around the outside there. I watched that 250 race and I was like, “I’ve got a good gate pick and I want to sweep that outside and it paid off.” I was trying, Chase was riding a great pace at the front, so was Jason, obviously he had a little mishap. Just felt good to be up front tonight and improve the starts. We’re getting going and we’re getting better every weekend.”

Tomac took over the points lead from Justin Barcia who had a strange night. Not only did Barcia suffer an uncharacteristic bad start, but he also got into it early with Justin Bogle while they were both battling just inside the top 10. Bogle was left on the ground for some time before remounting and going a lap down. When Barcia came around to lap Bogle, Bogle made sure to show Barcia exactly how he felt about the situation. Barcia ended up on the ground, Bogle would later be disqualified, and Barcia would also be penalized a position as well from the earlier contact.

So, moving into a tie now for second in the points is Red Bull KTM’s Cooper Webb. Webb is one point off the lead now and his scores have been a bit all over the place as well with 2-7-4 scores after a fourth on Saturday in San Diego. Webb was sick, the team announced, at the Oakland Supercross so that perhaps explains his struggles there, but he also went a bit backwards in San Diego before coming forward again late. Even so, Webb was pretty even tempered about his evening.

“It’s not too bad, it was a struggle today to say the least, practice didn’t go great,” said Webb. “We fought hard that whole main event and gave it everything we had. We’re only one point out and I can’t complain about that, but I didn’t feel good last week, and I didn’t perform very well. We’ve got some work to do on the motorcycle and myself. I’m happy with where we are in the points, but we need to get going, no doubt.”

Rounding out the podium on the night behind Sexton and Tomac was Tomac’s teammate at Yamaha, Dylan Ferrandis. Ferrandis got a better start in San Diego, though it’s not quite where he wants to be just yet. His charge throughout the main saw him pass a lot of the top guys in the class, but he ran out of steam once he got into third place and nearly lost the podium near the end to Webb.

“We worked on the bike especially on the start, to improve,” said Ferrandis. “The better start helped me a lot, we just showed what we are capable of on the track with a good start. Two bikes on the podium is what we can do. I think we were a little bit surprised how bad we were at A1 with the starts. Tonight, was much better for Eli and myself but we know we need to work more to get consistent good starts.”

For the second straight week in a row, Malcolm Stewart rounded out the top five in the main event. Stewart, who now sits eighth in the championship, is just seven points behind Tomac as the top group in the series still remains blanketed by just a handful of points here or there. Aside from three points separating fourth in the championship Justin Barcia back to fifth in the championship of Aaron Plessinger, it’s all single point gaps throughout the top eight.

On a more somber note from the evening, both Joey Savatgy and Adam Cianciarulo would withdraw from racing action after taking part in their heat races on Saturday. For Savatgy, a first turn crash coupled with an already problematic torn ACL left the Rocky Mountain KTM rider limping back to the pits and out for the evening. In Cianciarulo’s case, he had a big moment in the final qualifying session and allegedly injured his knee in the process. He tried to race his heat race, but it was just too much, and he too would call his night early. No official updates on either rider moving forward have been provided.

So, three rounds in, three different winners, and a brand-new winner at that. Odds are heavily favored to have Cooper Webb and Eli Tomac winning races soon or at least at some point. Getting five different winners in a season is starting to become the standard and it seems very likely it will happen this year, if not even more than five. So, who’s next? We’ll have to find out next week in Anaheim.

Moving onto the 250SX class, a lot of the discussions revolved around Christian Craig. Through two rounds, Craig had been near perfect in both main events with just a few laps being led by Vince Friese and Jo Shimoda, respectively. Otherwise, it had been the Craig show in Anaheim and Oakland and it seemed like there would be no slowing down in San Diego.

However, among these discussions of how strong Craig has been, it was also just as much talked about that at some point Craig would face adversity. He’s had moments throughout his career where everything seems like it was clicking, and things just happened. Well in San Diego, things happened.

Right as the gate dropped in the 250SX main event, chaos ensued when a pinch from Michael Mosiman and Hunter Lawrence trying to get to the inside of the first turn caused Craig, Garrett Marchbanks, Jo Shimoda, Chris Blose, Robbie Wageman, and Ryan Surratt to all end up piled up on the inside of turn one.

Mosiman got away with the holeshot as Craig was left to regroup and regroup he did. After a few laps of making sure everything was in order with the bike and himself, Craig began picking guys off one by one and was into the top five by the halfway point of the main event. He continued charging all throughout the race and was able to get by Vince Friese with just a few laps remaining to earn an incredible podium from being nearly dead last.

“There’s nothing worse than laying in the first turn with your head in the ground,” said Craig. “I just had to dig deep, and my heart came out tonight. I dug deep from turn one until that checkered flag and I’m really thankful to be up here [on the podium]. I heard the crowd all night and to do that in my hometown was so special.”

Craig’s performance not only earned him a podium, but it also helped him maintain the championship lead as he sits six points clear of Hunter Lawrence. Hunter Lawrence was part of the melee going into the first turn as he was squeezed into Craig by Mosiman who was swooping in from the outside. Similar to Mosiman though, Lawrence got away unscathed and was into second early on as he and Mosiman put a massive gap on everyone else.

The battle out front for the main event victory was a lot of cat and mouse racing. Lawrence would push up to Mosiman and then Mosiman would inch back away from Lawrence. It all came to a head with a few minutes left on the clock when Mosiman came up to lap Cole Thompson and Thompson, who hadn’t moved for any blue flags for half a lap, then squeezed Mosiman to the inside line on the dragons back. Mosiman then had to block pass Thompson to put him a lap down and somehow get a drive for the whoops from the inside. Lawrence had squared up the turn behind them and was coming down the outside of the whoops weaving through lapped traffic as well when he got out of shape and went flipping into Mosiman at the end of them. Lawrence was quick to his feet though and the battle continued.

Mosiman appeared to settle his pace back down while Lawrence laid it all out there to close a three second deficit after the crash back to nothing and go after the race win as the white flag waved. He got close, but it just wasn’t to be for the Aussie in San Diego. Instead, the long awaited first career main event victory for Michael Mosiman came on Saturday night. An elated Mosiman was at a loss for words on the podium but further explained later why he didn’t feel too pressure in those tense final moments.

“I’ve been riding a lot with Justin Barcia,” said Mosiman. “It felt like a day at the test track, with him right on me. I put in a few burner laps, and then I didn’t see [Hunter Lawrence] or hear him. I didn’t know he was right there. Then I saw his board and I was like, “Okay, it’s about to get going.” One of the things I’ve been working on here is to just stay present. The lappers were pretty tough. I think I did the dragon’s back to the extreme inside, then just got barely up into fourth [gear] to get into the whoops. Then Jalek [Swoll] was not letting me by easy. Then he was right back on me.”

It certainly was a wild race at the end. But up until that point, the chess match between the two was fascinating to dissect. They both seemed to have spots that were working for them, and it was coming down to which laps they were able to push and either close up in Lawrence’s case or extend the gap in Mosiman’s case. Afterwards, Lawrence explained that he felt like the race was playing out just the way he wanted it to up until the chaos at the end.

“I was just trying to let the race come to me,” said Lawrence. “I didn’t take into account how bad the lappers were going to be. Maybe I could have forced the issue earlier, but coulda woulda shoulda.”

As mentioned, Lawrence sits six points behind Craig whereas Mosiman leapfrogged into third place in the standings and is just 11 points back of the Yamaha man. It was Vince Friese in fourth on Saturday with a strong recovery from Shimoda to come all the way back from that first turn melee to round out the top five.

But the point has been made, Christian Craig had a bad night but still ended up on the podium. For Mosiman and Lawrence, chipping away points from Craig will have to come from beating him straight up and we’re sure to see that battle soon. Perhaps we’ll see it in Anaheim this coming weekend for round four on Monster Energy Supercross. Both classes have a lot of drama still in this early season and it only seems to be heating up more. We’ll see you in Anaheim next Saturday!