Saturday Night Live: Houston

The race after that had to be restarted and the staggered start rule came in to play as they had just completed three laps of racing when the red flag was displayed. That left Tomac in the lead of the staggered start with Plessinger still right behind him. On the restart, Anderson swooped Plessinger for second quickly and Sexton was soon to follow after that. Sexton then caught and passed Anderson and began eating away at Tomac’s lead. It seemed inevitable that Sexton would get to Tomac and the same thing from the heat race would happen. But, Tomac had other plans.

Sexton got to him, showed him a wheel a couple times, and then bobbled which gave Tomac a small gap. Tomac went into high gear after that and for the second half of the main event, he just inched away from Sexton behind him. Sexton couldn’t seem to find the same flow that he had, but Tomac was also just too much. In the end, Tomac would secure his third win of the season and his 47^th career victory as well to extend his championship lead out to seven points over Sexton. In a night that Tomac didn’t seem to have it, a week removed from a violent crash, he pulled a win right out from the top drawer.

“That was a big rebound for us,” said Tomac. “Last week’s crash was really scary, and I still can’t believe I’m healthy. Just wanted to come here and have a good solid race. My starts were back to where I was up front in both of those races. That was key for me. The red flags are always wild there, and that was unfortunate for my teammate Dylan. I just improved my riding in the main event. The whole day, Chase had another level on us. I just ended up riding better in the main, found a couple more lines. I don’t know, I was able to do it for those 20 minutes there.”

Sexton was left to settle with second on the night but the positive he can hang his hat on is that he was unquestionably the fastest guy all day until about six minutes to go in the main event. He caught Eli Tomac on two separate occasions on the night and it was a solid finish for Sexton who coupled race winning speed with spectacular crashes last year. Now he can settle further into a true championship fight as this series moves into the middle stanza. Still though, he lamented that the win was likely there for the taking.

“It wasn’t great by any means,” said Sexton “I feel like the strengths that I had all day really lagged in the main event. Between the whoops and the sand section, I could have walked through it faster. It was still a good ride, but it wasn’t great. Eli rode good and I knew he would, he was going to be fired up after the heat race. Tonight, I was just second best, I guess. It was tough to let that one go and let Eli get away.”

Rounding out the podium was Jason Anderson who ended up being just a tick off of what Tomac and Sexton were doing in the main event but was also clearly the third best guy. Despite letting Sexton through for second, Anderson was able to latch on to him and keep the Honda man honest for a while even after Sexton had caught Tomac. Points building is going to be critical for Anderson to stack good results like this podium on nights where he can’t match Tomac or Sexton and that’s exactly what he accomplished on the night with taking home a third place.

“You know, it’s really tough,” explained Anderson. “I’m excited to be up here, we should be thankful every time we’re up here. But these guys are making it tough on me. All I can do is just keep putting my heart into my riding and everything that I do. We’ll keep striving to be better.”

The two Red Bull KTM’s of Aaron Plessinger and Cooper Webb rounded out the top five on the night. Plessinger was very happy with his riding and mentioned that he felt more comfortable with the bike on this type of track, but Webb explained that it was sort of the opposite for him. For Webb, he likes the tracks that break down a lot so you can low line some of the turns and cut tight, but the track tonight was very high speed with long swooping ruts that Webb just didn’t gel with.

He was still able to sneak fifth away right at the end when Justin Barcia went down hard in the whoops, but fifth was all he had. Barcia still finished sixth behind him and then Justin Cooper passed Ken Roczen on the final lap to snag seventh in his 450SX debut. Some good for Star and some bad for Star on the night, but Cooper certainly showed he belonged with a good late race charge.

For now, though, Tomac sits seven points up on Sexton and 12 points up on Webb as we get into this mid-season swing.

The 250SX class saw the East Regional Championship kick off in Houston with a stacked list of riders like Hunter Lawrence, Michael Mosiman, Jeremy Martin, Nate Thrasher, Jordon Smith, Max Anstie, and more ready to do battle. But the storyline also centered around several key supercross debuts from names like Haiden Deegan, Tom Vialle, Chance Hymas, Talon Hawkins, and more. It was essentially a tale of veterans versus rookies with each group having a different level of expectation.

Honda HRC’s Hunter Lawrence arguably came in as the favorite on the heels of four wins in 250SX West last year and he delivered the goods in his heat race with a wire-to-wire victory. The big story of the afternoon was that of Firepower Honda’s Max Anstie who was quickest in both qualifying sessions and was P1 heading into the night. Anstie was second in his heat though behind Monster Energy Yamaha/Star Racing’s Jordon Smith and we were all set for the first main event of the year.

Lawrence snagged the holeshot, but it was actually two-time MX2 World Champion Tom Vialle who grabbed the early lead. Lawrence reacted on the first lap to Vialle scrubbing the triple and almost went down as he landed off the track, eventually rejoining in third behind his teammate Chance Hymas. Vialle led for a few laps before Lawrence passed him in the whoops and took off. Anstie was able to get around Vialle for second, but he only matched Lawrence’s pace for a while before fading off his tail towards the end. It was a relatively eventless victory in the end for the elder Lawrence brother as he collected his sixth career 250SX win and takes over the championship lead of the now underway East championship.

“I’m not trying to go out and establish myself, I know what I can do on a bike,” said Lawrence. “And I know where I could have been better last year, so I’m just trying to do that. But qualifying was a little rough. If you put all my best segments together, I could have had a pole lap, but I just couldn’t seem to do all my best segments all in one lap. Happy to execute. We worked on our starts, had good starts in the heat and the main. It was a pretty good day.”

Anstie was left to settle for second on the night, but second was huge for him in his first 250SX race in nearly a decade. Despite losing touch with Lawrence out front, he kept Vialle at bay behind him to the tune of a few seconds before Vialle actually fell from third and then Anstie held a comfortable gap over all the battling behind that. It certainly looks like Anstie is ready to contend for a title in this 250SX class.

“Honestly, it’s a dream,” said Anstie. “I’ve waited a long time to be up here and go up those steps up to the podium. My very first year in supercross, 2010, I was 16 years old, and I nearly got a podium then. The next year I went to Europe and didn’t come back. I got into that over there and I had success. I’m lucky my family supports this because it’s a big move. It’s a great feeling to be up here and be competitive. Every day I wake up trying to figure out how can I get through whoops, or how can I get through that on-off better. I really enjoy motocross too, but it got to the point where I knew where it was gonna be. I’ve ridden with the Star boys a few times and they normally smoke me. I was just hoping for a top ten. I honestly looked at the top of the board, I looked around fifth and I didn’t see my name, I didn’t realize I was in first.”

As mentioned, Vialle was in third behind Anstie for a long time before he missed his brakes after the supercross triple late in the race and went down on the top of a berm. As he slid back, that allowed a battle between Jordon Smith and Muc-Off/FXR/ClubMX Yamaha’s Jeremy Martin for the final spot on the podium. It looked to be all Smith’s, who had recovered from a tip over in the sand to catch and pass Martin, but Martin made a late charge. As they went through the whoops side by side on the last lap, Martin clipped a lapper and got sideways before coming to a dead stop and stalling the bike. That gave Smith plenty of time to cruise it home in third.

“Yeah, the sand tonight was pretty treacherous,” said Smith. “They built those big rollers, and you felt like you never got to the bottom of it. Been a long time since I rode something like that, not doing outdoors last year. Honestly, I felt pretty good in it in the main event until I went down there. I felt really good all day, maybe the most comfortable I’ve ever felt in supercross.”

Now we get to quite the storyline behind Smith, and it comes in the form of his teammate Haiden Deegan. When Martin stalled on the last lap, Deegan benefitted as he passed him to move into fourth place and earn a well-deserved top five result on debut. Deegan was steady through the whole main event and rode within himself while others made mistakes. He mentioned afterwards that he was surprised how many mistakes were being made by the veteran guys around him. But he was elated to walk home with a fourth place in his first professional supercross as he looks to build towards the podium moving forward.

Martin rounded out the top five behind him which is good points on the day. The last lap snafu will be a bummer to Martin, but to be in position for a podium late was also a huge positive as well. Behind them, Michael Mosiman brought it home sixth and lamented that starts really cost him this weekend. He also explained to us that mentally he needs to change a few things about how he approaches these races but feels confident that the result tonight is not the expectation moving forward.

Tom Vialle brought it home seventh and was happy with his early laps led, his consistent speed throughout the main event, and happy that he’s healthy despite the late crash. And Chance Hymas ended up right behind him in eighth with a solid day and solid result as well. Hymas was similar to Deegan in that he was happy to shake off the butterflies and get one of these under his belt.

That’s it for Houston though as the 250SX East grind begins and a championship begins to take shape. Next up is Tampa next week which will be round two of their series as we head into round five for the 450SX class. We’ll see you in Florida!