My how quickly things can change in this game. Seven days before the Nashville round of Monster Energy AMA Supercross, just five points stood between Cooper Webb and Eli Tomac. Webb held Tomac at bay at the previous round in Atlanta, clawing back one point and proving this title fight was not over. A week later—it was over, at least for Webb. First, Tomac pulled away from him in the mud of New Jersey, opening the gap to 11 points. Webb had to come out aggressively in Nashville, and he did, fighting Tomac immediately for the lead on the first lap of a heat race. Then, a rare mistake and crash from Webb, which left him on the ground. When Webb hit the ground, third-place Adam Cianciarulo had nowhere to go, and he ran into Webb. Webb suffered a concussion, and just like that his season was over.
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About an hour later, Tomac led the Nashville 450SX main event, threatening to push his points lead so far that he could wrap the championship up one race early, at his home-state race next weekend in Denver. A nail-biting down-to-the-wire championship duel was now on the verge of ending a week early.
In the end, Chase Sexton caught Eli and made the move to take the win. That bumped Sexton to second in points and cut his deficit down to 18 on Tomac. While it’s a long shot, it is at least likely Sexton will prevent Tomac from wrapping the title up early. With Webb out of the running, Tomac has clearly shifted his mindset to staying safe and wrapping this up.
“I saw it,” Tomac said of the Webb heat race incident. “He actually caught me off guard in the second turn, and kind of spooked me. Then I just went and tried to do the same move to him on the third turn after the whoops. I don’t think we even touched. It’s almost like I kind of spooked him too, and then he washed his front end out. I looked back to see if he actually fell, and then I saw Adam [hit his] head. It was gnarly. Yeah, unfortunate when you see a guy get hit like that when he’s down.”
Knowing Webb was out, Tomac could now shift into safe mode for the main. He holeshot and led early but took no risks.
“Got another great start and was riding in my zone, but I had a couple moments in the whoops, straight up, so I just backed it down,” Tomac said. “I basically backed down my pace. You saw dust but there was some soft spots out there, and those pockets were really tricky. Chase was going fast as well.”
Sexton is now the one who races like there’s nothing to lose.
“I would actually say it’s the opposite,” said Sexton of backing it down, since the title is nearly out of reach for him. “I don’t want to ride over my head by any means, but if I have an opportunity in front of me to win, that’s what I’m going to do. With Eli, with the way this track was, with how sketchy it was, I knew he wasn’t going to push, to where if I pushed him he wasn’t going to fight back. I started just clicking off my laps and I had a good flow. I didn’t feel sketchy at all. I’m offensive on the mentality side right now. That’s the position I am in, where he has 18 points to play with.”
Tomac now knows exactly how he wants the next two weekends to play out.
“Well, like a repeat of this weekend would be just fine, but I know anything can happen,” said the defending champion. “You need to just take it weekend by weekend and not think of the last round yet. I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. I guess at this point my goal would be podiums.
“I just say that’s the condition that we had today, it started with the rain and then it dried out,” Tomac said of managing the day at Nashville. “So you get those soft pockets with dry dirt. It just becomes an unpredictable surface. After the 250 main I was like I hope they groom that dragon back, because it looked like staring at a curb. They did groom it, but it was still tough and it bit two or three guys. That’s just what you get when the track goes from soft to dry so quickly.”
| Position | Rider | Hometown | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Chase Sexton | La Moille, IL  | 372 |
| 2 |  Eli Tomac | Cortez, CO | 339 |
| 3 |  Cooper Webb | Newport, NC | 304 |
| 4 |  Ken Roczen | Mattstedt, Germany  | 304 |
| 5 |  Justin Barcia | Monroe, NY | 267 |
Tomac is the full package as a racer these days, picking his spots masterfully. He’s still very fast when needed, but only takes what each race presents to him. At times, he’s willing to accept losing time or points to his rivals if it keeps him safe in the long term. A young Tomac was more like Sexton is today—brutally fast, but prone to just enough mistakes to push the title out of reach. Back in 2017, Tomac was quicker than defending champion Ryan Dungey, but he had more bad races than Dungey, so he came up short of the crown. Now, Eli manages the bad days better than anyone. For Nashville, even a holeshot didn’t get him so fired up as to risk it all for one more race win.
He was asked if this is the strongest he has even been, mentally:
“For sure as you get into your late 20s, your mind changes, your patience changes,” Tomac says. “You’ve been doing it a long time. I feel like my mind, absolutely is the best it has been for racing.”
It’s been a wild season in supercross, but the task of locking down another title looks relatively mild for Eli Tomac right now. If he can manage the next two weeks, he’ll add yet another major accolade to a career already chock-full of them.
