Open Mic Anderson Lands Podium at A2

At the first two Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship events of 2023, Jason Anderson finished 7-7 and made a few mistakes that hindered his results. However, at the third Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship event of 2023, Jason Anderson earned his first podium finish of the season. The #21 finished 5-1-3 for second overall behind event winner Chase Sexton.

Afterwards, Anderson spoke to the media via the post-race press conference. During the presser, Anderson said it was a better weekend, but he is still hungry to improve and earn that first win of the season.

Jason, the opening two rounds have been rough. Tonight, was it just minimizing the mistakes that put you on the box, or did you change some things?
Jason Anderson: Yeah, the first two rounds have been really tough on me, just crashes on my own. First race [Anaheim 1] I had a big crash in practice. Last weekend I felt like I rode pretty good, I felt like I was in no-man’s land, and I threw away a podium with eight minutes to go. Pushed the front again. Tonight, in that last race I had some PTSD when I was in a podium position, and you don’t want to throw those away. Now I want to build from here. I want to be where Chase is. We’ll keep working hard to get here.

You finally found some clean air in the second race, and then did it again in the third. How good did it feel to finally be out front?
Yeah, obviously my starts haven’t been as good as last year, and I think the only way you learn to hold that pace up front is to get good starts. That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to put ourselves in position to have success. Otherwise, you’re putting yourself in positions to make mistakes and have to battle other guys. And that doesn’t help you battle to be on the podium or get wins.

On the podium you mentioned you had PTSD with the late crashes and errors throughout the race. Take us through how that feels.
Yeah, once you have a little history of making mistakes, the last couple of rounds, it’s really tough for you to have the opportunity again and not think about that. For me my goal was to be on the box tonight, but to win you really have to push it the whole time. I was excited to be to win that second one and excited to be in a good position in the third one. I’m excited to keep moving from here and keep improving everything and not make mistakes. These guys are all up front right now and we’ve got to not let them have it that easy.

Alpinestars did a lot of cool gear, the Ken Block tribute stuff?
Oh yeah Ken Block, in motorsports, is iconic. You can see the impact he had from all the Instagram posts and everything like that. I had the Hoonigan style kit on, it’s coo. Chase and I, with Alpinestars, we’re lucky to be part of a gear brand that does really cool stuff from time to time. Like our gear tonight, and you even saw it with Jett’s gear tonight, he did a collab. For us to do this for Ken Block, and his impact, it’s pretty cool for us to be able to have that.

Last week we had a field day in this press conference over your tweet regarding Justin Barcia. I think you took it down. You got into it with Barcia in the heat race last week. Did that impact you at all in last week’s main event, or tonight?
Yeah….it’s whatever. Obviously, I did tweet that and the AMA came over and asked me to take it down. That kind of surprised me, but I was just like, “I need to focus on this main event right now.” Me and him, we race hard, and I don’t think either of us have room to complain about anything that goes down. I’m trying to move forward and be the best me, regardless of what happens. For us, we have to put that behind us and move forward, that’s one of the mental things we have to deal with in our career. Yeah, I guess it was a little entertaining for you guys, but for us we’re just working hard and trying to be our best us, and we do take everything personal every time because there’s a lot at stake.