After winning four out of the first five 250SX East Coast Supercross rounds, Hunter Lawrence has extended his points lead to 22 points. Lawrence, who has always been fast enough to win races, has finally found an edge over his competition in good starts and consistency. Meanwhile Nate Trasher is working on his own consistency, finally getting two second place finishes so far this season. It's odd to say that finishing second is an improvement for a guy that has won races before but considering Thrasher has had sort of a “win or crash trying” career up until this point, having a pair of seconds is a sign of maturity. Jordon Smith, who has shown speed but also had some bad luck now sits 33 points back out of the lead. The three podium finishers from Indy shared their thoughts on the difficult track and strategy for the rest of the season.
Hunter Lawrence | 1st in 250SX
Racer X: Hunter you are still early in your supercross career when you think about the numbers and the places you have been, what was that one like, the way the track developed and broke down tonight?
Hunter Lawrence: It was my first time racing Indy, and it was kind of an eye opener. I was trying to just let it all come to me. How it was going to break down, and on the second lap it was already starting to break down!
You had a close call with a lapper, how close were you to going down and did you injure your hand with that hit on the right side?
Yeah, very close call! It was weird because when I stepped onto that tabletop, I was far right and he was just kind of rolling, but then when I stepped off, he went hard left. Yeah, somehow, I didn’t go down. Blew my hand off, got a dead leg from it. I think I might have broken his clutch lever! Luckily for me it wasn’t worse, hate to say that for him.”
Your starts have pretty much been on point now for a long time and I actually feel like that is something that maybe wasn’t so strong for you going back two years ago. So, what would you say has helped because obviously it was good tonight.
We’ve put a lot of work in. Outdoors, that’s why, I wouldn’t say things fell apart, but they weren’t coming together easily. We put in a lot of work with the team, found some inconsistencies with hard parts. Leaving Pala last year, I was so mad because my starts sucked! We worked probably from then until ‘Nations probably doing 30 starts per day, and then even after that, I was probably doing 25 starts every day I would ride, to create muscle memory and lock it in. Having Jett to work with, that helps because he’s a good starter, so you don’t create any false confidence.”
Nate Thrasher | 2nd in 250SX
Nate, it's kind of interesting this was one of the first times you got a podium that was not a a win, did it feel weird to just kind of ride around out there in second, rather than being outside of the podium or in first? It's kind of a spot you haven’t been in before.
Nate Thrasher: I’d rather be winning. I think that’s what everyone up here is striving to do. I wish I could have been a little closer off the start, I think I started around eighth. I was trying to push but I wasn’t able to make anything happen. I wish I was winning but second is good too.
Walk us through what it's like to ride a rough track like tonight that can grab you guys and cause a costly mistake. What was it like to ride the track without overriding it, but also try to keep Jordan behind you?
I’d say once I got into second I was doing everything I could to put in a charge and get up to Hunter. I couldn’t make it happen and we just kind of matched each other there. About 7 or 8 minutes in, I realized I was gonna need a mistake from him for him to come back to me. The track was super technical, but the lap times were still super closer. There wasn’t as much separation as you would think for how rutty it was. There wasn’t much I could do, I was giving it everything, and then starting to make mistakes here and there, so I realized I better bring it in. I was still giving it 100 percent, you never know with lappers. He had that mistake with the one lapper, and I don’t know how he saved it. I probably would have gone down! He’s a tough competitor and he’s riding really well out there, and Jordon is out there too not giving me any space. It was a tough racetrack tonight.
I know you are coming off of knee surgery, how is your knee tolerating racing and training as you prepare during the week?
It's not really too bad, I would say training is more effected by it but racing is pretty good. We are dealing with it doing the best we can. But training wise is the only thing that has been affected by it not getting to ride as much as I would like to. It's good, we’re feeling good and we’ll keep pushing.
Jordon Smith | 3rd in 250SX
Jordon, you are fourth in points, one behind your teammate Nate Thrasher, 33 behind Hunter. Does your strategy change compared to the first race of the year, till now?
Jordon Smith: Definitely at this point it’s going to take a huge mistake to try to get up there back to Hunter. It doesn’t really change the whole weekend for us, weekend to weekend. Just going to get a good week in before Detroit, test some outdoors, then try to come back strong after the break.
Talk about the racetrack and how it changes throughout the day, from the morning to the final lap tonight. Do you go back and change settings to find something different for these rutted tracks in the future? How was it for you?
I knew it was going to be gnarly just from the pictures and the videos I saw on press day. I was like “We might not even be jumping the supercross triples tonight.” Then we got two laps into free practice, and I was like “Okay, this is the real deal.” Honestly, it was gnarly in the main event, but I think the track crew did a good job with the time they had. Especially with the red flag in the heat race, I knew that would cost them some good track maintenance time. The whoops, I think I was the only guy hitting the line I was hitting in the whoops, and even just my tires alone, you could tell after a few laps.
You had a great night tonight with a heat race win, did you just sort of settle into a pace, like a survival instinct just to finish that race on the box.
Not really. The first maybe half of the race I was just really struggling in the whoops and that’s usually my strong point. And I was just not gelling with that rut down the middle and was trying to find a different line and it took me maybe eight laps to find the right side of the whoops. I started skimming them down that right side and felt way better but it was kind of too late by then.
You had a great night tonight with a heat race win, did you just sort of settle into a pace, like a survival instinct just to finish that race on the box.
The first half of the race I was really struggling in the whoops, and that’s usually my strong point, but I was not gelling with that rut. I finally found a line by like the eighth lap, but by the time I did, lappers were all over the place. It was just tough to get through there. This track, with the ruts, it was harder to go slower. They could pull up and try to double, but you could catch a rut and still cut across straight in front of you. I was trying to make a charge on Nate and get back to him, but yeah, it just didn’t happen.