Another race that Honda HRC’s Chase Sexton could have won, but he ultimately came home second in Arlington’s Triple Crown. It was a heartbreaker in the third race, as Sexton washed out while chasing Eli Tomac, and then got stuck behind a lapped rider, allowing Cooper Webb to slide by and steal the overall. But he wasn’t nearly as bummed as he was in Tampa and Oakland. That’s progress, at least.
Sexton reflected on it in the post-race press conference.
Chase we were talking before this thing started and you said when you went down you felt like you could still win. Walk us through how the rest of that race went.
Chase Sexton: This one, all night show I feel like my speed elevated from practice, which was good. Didn’t qualify fastest today so had a little bit more motivation. Then the first race I came from way back to third which was good. And then just every race I felt like I had really good speed and then the last main event I washed the front end in the corner, just a little bit too much, just came in a little too fast. Eli was still within reach I felt like and I just had really good pace. So still had my head down and obviously he made that mistake after the wall jump so obviously made it easy on me. Overall, I felt really solid all main events, every one of them. It was some of the best riding I have had, especially racing. And yeah, obviously we didn’t get the win, lapped traffic didn’t help, but everyone has to deal with the same stuff. So, got to be better with reading those guys and getting around them a little more clean. But, overall felt like I rode really well and definitely more positive this weekend than last.
Chase, how does it feel knowing you are going to have to go to war with Eli for the rest of the summer? [Eli Tomac has announced he will return for the Pro Motocross Championship.]
I’m excited, it's going to be fun. I mean obviously there’s so many other guys that are obviously good and yeah like I said I am excited. It's cool to see him racing, he’s obviously not getting worse I feel like he’s getting better and better so it's going to be fun. And yeah, we will have Cooper out there, everybody, like I said it should be fun and I am excited.
Chase, the last few weeks you said you guys were going to go back and look at stuff, your riding and the bike. Did you find some settings this week to help you with some confidence late in the race?
Yeah, we messed with some fork stuff this week, like I said I am trying to kind of analyze the bike and myself at the same time. It's not one thing that’s causing these issues, so I obviously went back watched the video, tried some fork stuff this week at the practice track, and I raced on that tonight. And I felt like tonight the track really had, it was deceiving because it looked like it had traction, but it didn’t have that much. And I feel like I have struggled with losing the front in conditions like this in the past and tonight I feel like front end traction was pretty darn good. So, I feel like we made a good step in the right direction, and we are going to keep building. We are going to test this week and obviously everyone is going to have their little Daytona track so that is going to be fun.
Was it a little redemption tonight after you went down and then you saw a bunch of other guys go down, a little pressure off of you?
[Laughs] I don’t want to see anybody crash. That’s not how you want to win but I made that small mistake and got up pretty fast, but I thought, I might, it was just a stupid mistake, I came in way too fast. So yeah, you don’t want to see anybody crash, you obviously want to see everybody stay up and have the best man win but tonight I definitely feel like I have limited the mistakes that I have had lately.
Chase, follow up on that crash, earlier in the night you used that line to pass somebody and drove it in really deep. Were you thinking the rut was similar and you were just going to pull the same move? What was the difference there because one time it worked perfect and the next time you washed.
Well they fixed the track for the last main event and when I made those passes middle of the way through the first main event the rut was pretty deep. So, obviously there’s more to hit when they don’t groom it so I just came in and the rut was a little shallow and just basically just pushed the front over it. So just a little bit of track conditions and me not reading it correctly.
Is this the pattern that we can expect for the rest of the year? The three of you fighting for it and seeing who can make the fewest mistakes? And then the mistakes that are there, is it because you guys are so tight pushing each other so much?
Yeah, it's pretty enjoyable racing these two. Obviously got the chance to race Eli in the summer and battle with him. And now having Cooper in supercross, they’re definitely no slouches, they’re very good at what they do. And for me I definitely feel like I am riding good, but I still have some things to learn so I’m trying to get better every weekend. The mistakes that we’ve made I think it's just because we want to win so bad, and we’ll do anything to do it. I’m going to keep swinging until I can stick one.
