It has now grown into a weekly story. Chase Sexton has all the tools to win, but he doesn’t. He won the Triple Crown at Anaheim 2 but did overcome a fall there, the three-main format helping bail him out. At the last three races, back to the traditional 20-plus 1 schedule, he was the fastest rider in Houston but couldn’t find that speed when he needed it most in the late laps. He crashed while leading Tampa. He crashed while leading Saturday in Oakland. He escaped unhurt again, but Eli Tomac sailed past to take a key win in the series. Wind out of his sails, Sexton surrendered second, too.
“Up until the crash I felt so comfortable and so smooth. I had a really good flow going. I wish I could tell you what happened,” Sexton said. “I landed and there was a two-wheel slide and there was nothing I could do. After that, it’s really hard to get back into the flow with a track like that. I had a few good laps, but then I started to really get off balance on the jump line and Cooper caught me really fast. I was being very, very timid on the dragon’s back. I didn’t feel comfortable on it, and after the crash I was really trying to not make any more mistakes. Obviously he caught me and I was just in survival mode. Up until the crash, I was feeling so good. I felt so comfortable and had a good flow going. We just have to go back to work, figure out what was wrong and fix it. The bike was fine. I was fine. Just trying to get back into the flow was tough.”
Last week we dove into Sexton’s mindset after the race. Leading and crashing is such a crushing blow. Chase is trying to keep it from pulling him down.
“If you look at the negative, you’ll never pull yourself out of it. Negativity is never the answer. If I can be positive and try to be better, that’s all I can do,” he says. “I don’t want to think it’s bad luck, noting like that. Just gotta be better. Me being positive is really the only way out of it and I definitely think I’m capable of fixing the problem. It’s just finding those small pieces and putting them together. Everything else is really good.”
Why did he crash?
“It's hard to say,” he said. “I did the same thing I did the lap before and I didn’t end up on the ground. It is tough. It’s tough mentally to analyze what happened. It happened so fast and at that point there’s no saving it. Gotta go back and try to be better. You can’t blame the bike. I need to look back and go back to work.”
Before his big crash, Sexton made a mistake. He says that mistake did not lead to the crash. He had put it out of his mind. He felt fine until he wasn’t.
“I don’t think that [earlier crash] played any part,” he said. “Like I said I jumped the jump exactly how I did prior to that.”
Sexton tried to change his ways after that first crash. He backed it way down, and that let Webb go through.
“After that I changed my line to jumping the dragon’s back, which was slow,” he admits. “It’s something I’ve learned over the last few years. It’s better to be on your bike than be off of it. I was just trying to not make anymore huge mistakes and just make it to the finish line.”
After that, and taking third, it was time to reflect again and dig out the positives.
“Yeah…It’s very frustrating,” Sexton said. “My riding and everything has been super good. First 10 minutes I felt really in a comfort zone, I wasn’t over ridding, I was hitting my marks. It happens and it’s unfortunate. But I’m still here. I’m still in it and I still have an opportunity to come out next week and prove myself and fix the wrongs that I made. I think for me it’s riding rougher tracks during the week and trying to replicate what I’m racing on. It’s very tough. But that’s the only way we can get better. If I need to adjust the bike or myself, that’s where we need to do it: for the last ten minutes of the main event. That’s what I’m focused on, and like I said, positivity is going to be the fix.”
That said, staying positive is difficult, and Sexton admits it’s a challenge. His main solace is getting another chance, every week, to get that final step.
“I’m pretty fired up, that’s all I can say,” he says. “There’s not much to be super happy about, and I’m my own biggest critic. I hold myself to a pretty high standard and when I don’t live up to that, I’m pretty disappointed. It’s fun that we get to race every weekend because we get that next chance to fix it. I’m pretty fired up that that happened.”
