450 Words Digging Out ⛏️

He’s proven to be one of the most stubborn, determined, and clutch riders in the history of the series. As long as he’s healthy, it would of course would be foolish to count Cooper Webb out after five rounds of a series. In fact, if anyone is capable of making something good out of a back-against-the-wall situation, he would be the one.

But this is not good.

Back-to-back eighths for the two-time and defending Monster Energy AMA Supercross Champion. His season is trending down instead of up, with a score card of 2-7-4-8-8. He’s not 23 points down of a surging Eli Tomac because of bad racing luck or circumstances. Jason Anderson is 15 points down, but only because luck has bounced away from him several times. Anderson has been plenty fast, Webb has not. He hasn’t been close enough to the front to launch his patented late-race attacks. He’s made some uncharacteristic mistakes, and he’s getting passed more than he’s passing. This isn’t what we’re used to seeing.

We know where this goes next. Webb and his fellow Red Bull KTM and Rockstar Energy Husqvarna riders are riding brand-new bikes. We’ve seen this scenario play out many times. An all-new bike can be an immediate hit (the new-generation KTM in 2015 took Ryan Dungey to a much higher level than 2014) or a momentary step back. Many times a machine that stumbles out of the gate ends up becoming very good. Honda’s all-new CRF450R in 2009 was not well-received, but by 2011 Chad Reed built his whole team around one, Trey Canard was kicking butt on his, and Justin Barcia hopped on one outdoors and made a lot of noise. Same bike, with the right tweaks, and of course, time. The problem is that Webb is the defending champ with very high standards, so eighth-place finishes don’t go under the radar, and the urgency to get it fixed compresses time down to weeks instead of years.

It’s pretty clear the good vibes the new bike produced at the test track in the off-season have not materialized at the races. Webb mentioned “race conditions” to me when I talked to him on Friday before Glendale. Round four at Anaheim 2 had not gone well. From what I’ve heard, it was actually Malcolm Stewart who led the charge for changes after Anaheim 2. At Anaheim, Malcolm had gotten a rare good start but wasn’t able to turn it into a podium. He wasn’t happy, and that ignited a serious effort across the board for all the riders.

“The first couple rounds we were just learning the bike,” Stewart explained after Glendale, where he ratcheted up to a second-place finish. He was very diplomatic about the process, not slamming the bike or team at all.

“Putting it in the race conditions, you start to learn how the motorcycle works and stuff,” explained Stewart. “I feel like we did a really big turnaround this week. I feel like we really just went back to the basics, when we first got on the bike. I felt like that really improved everything.”

On Friday before Glendale, Webb also expressed optimism they were heading in the right direction.

“We went to the drawing board, big time, from the bosses all the way to the riders,” Webb told me. “This bike is very good. It’s just finding comfort in race conditions.”

It’s a head scratcher because the riders all seemed to love the new bike in the off-season. But you never know how the tracks will develop and the competition will perform. It’s tempting to think maybe last year’s bike would be better, but Webb isn’t racing last year’s competition. Tomac, Anderson, and Chase Sexton, to name a few, are better.

“It’s tough,” said Webb. “We made progress the whole step of the way. You’re comfortable on what you’ve got, but in the back of your mind you’re second guessing yourself a little bit. Once you go racing, it’s harsh reality.”

For Stewart, the weekend was better. Webb expected it to be.

“I think we made progress,” he told me. “I think we’ve got a race horse.”

Unfortunately, the progress didn’t materialize for Webb. He looked feisty right from the get-go in practice, he tried hard on the opening laps of the races, but he ended up going backward. His scores in the Triple Crown format were 8-8-5. It was more like his performances early in last year’s Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship when he would get shuffled back, and unlike what we’ve come to expect in supercross.

The good news for Webb is they made some big bike changes last summer in motocross, too, and that really turned things around for him late in the year, when he became a podium guy and started challenging for wins. He needs to figure out the fix for this bike even more quickly, because this title attempt will slip away quickly. Eastern tracks are looming on the schedule, and you’d imagine more bike changes will come. Can Webb figure it out? Likely he will. But will it be too late?

“There’s always a fix,” he says. “I think when I’m comfortable good things happen.”