Observations: Denver

Brutal sport man. I’m getting a lot of social media comments about all the injured riders. I’m of the opinion that yes, three of fifteen factory riders making every race isn’t good for anyone but it’s not a four-stroke thing. We’ve had years in the ‘90s when we were on two-strokes when most of the factory guys were hurt. In 2003, I remember the series looking just like this, and it was pretty much all two-strokes at that time in supercross. It’s a dangerous sport for sure, shit happens. Look, I’m on the record as saying that front and back chest protection should be mandatory (like MXGP) in our sport to help protect the guys, but it’s not like that move will guarantee our guys to make it through the year.

Something to think about is whether it’s F1, NASCAR, IndyCar, or NHRA Drag Racing, there are rules to limit the horsepower the teams can make. We have 450’s that are high-powered dragsters tuned to such a degree that engineers can fine tune what percentage of fuel is delivered in certain corners on the track. Mistakes by the riders don’t mean anything, because they can literally be stopped in a turn and quad out. There’s no fear of a bike burping or cutting out anymore. You could jump a 450 out of the stadium if the jump was big enough. The riders are able to go faster than ever before, and therefore, hit the ground harder than ever before. Maybe it’s time to limit the power these bikes put out?

To add to this, since the addition of 20-minute main events, with the addition of Futures at some races, the tracks can’t handle the bikes anymore. They’re absolutely beat by the end of the main events. Maybe there’s something we can do there? 

But EVEN IF you did all of the above, there will still be injuries during the week and at the races. It’s a dangerous sport no matter what you do. What can you do? Lots of things to discuss when it comes to this, but one thing I think everyone can agree on is, it’s not good for anyone when we have this many stars out of the sport. Well, the only guys it does help is the the privateers who are getting career-best results right now.

Chase Sexton won again, and with ease. He’s going to be crowned your 2023 450SX champion this weekend and, wow. Right? Classy move by Sexton’s Honda HRC Team Manager, Lars Lindstrom, to tell his guys to not celebrate that much on the podium because of the circumstances behind Sexton winning the title. Don't want to disrespect Tomac. Next week though, I’m sure all bets are off.

I said this on my PulpMX Show, there’s a difference between the best rider and the fastest rider. The best rider this year was Tomac. He won the most races and he stayed out of any big issues throughout 15 races. But yeah, getting injured is a thing and he’s going to lose this title because he couldn’t stay away from it. Sexton, however, is the fastest rider this year. No one can have any doubt of that and when he wins this weekend, he’ll have one less win than Tomac, he’ll be fastest qualifier in almost all the races, he’ll have led more laps than Tomac, and he fully deserves this championship. There’s no backing into this title, he was the fastest rider this season and he made it to all 17 rounds. Enjoy the #1 plate, Sexton and Honda, who also breaks this “Honda curse” the media loves talking about. Honda hasn’t won since Carmichael left and that’s over. Thankfully.

Ken Roczen came back from a first-turn crash. He was dead last, then got hung up in the second turn and made it all the way to second. Two things can be true here in that Roczen rode great, and yes, it was a depleted field. Great work for the 94 to be strong at all 17 races, something he’s not been able to do at Honda the last few years.

We had Roczen on the PulpMX Show and he admitted that sometimes, if he’s not feeling it, he’s not going to push it, and that his seemingly still-there viral condition is a factor in how hard he goes at it. He mentioned also that, “Chase is faster than me,” and spoke about watching him practice during the week, which is amazing. This HEP Suzuki/Roczen thing worked out about as well as any of us could’ve predicted, right?

You’ve seen the announcement that Roczen is committed to the World SX series for three years. Kenny spoke about that on the show, saying that to specialize in one area (SX) will allow him to be his best. (That and the bags of cash the WSX guys threw at him as well, I would think.) Honestly though, Roczen has two American motocross titles, he beat Ryan Dungey for them, he’s got a World MX title (beating Herlings), he’s shown that the heat and humidity does get to him physically, and if I were him, I’d take the bags of cash and do SX only. He’s earned that at this point. 

I believe, with one race left, that Suzuki has more podiums than Kawasaki this year in the 450SX class, and with Jason Anderson and Adam Cianciarulo riding green, that is NOT one stat I thought we’d see this year. Roczen’s got a win and five other podiums (a sixth will come this weekend) while Team Green has three.

I also believe that if Kawasaki doesn’t get a win this weekend in 250SX and 450SX, it’ll be the first time since 1983 (!!!!) that Kawasaki won’t have won a race in SX. There were a few bleak years in the 450 class with Davi Millsaps and Wil Hahn, but at least then Chad Reed on TwoTwo or Pro Circuit in the 250s got a win in that time. PC didn’t win in 2001 and 2016, but RC and Tomac got them 450 wins. Jeff Ward won in the premier class from ’84-’89, Matiasevich in ’90, there were the Kiedrowski and Larocco years, which led into the Jeff Emig years, which led into the RC years, which led into the Stew years, which led into the RV years, which led to the Tomac years. The lineage of Kawasaki has been VERY strong over the years and an amazing streak for an OEM might be over here unless someone comes up big in SLC.

But yeah, AC got a third this week and was pretty emotional about it. Justifiable also. First podium for Adam since Houston 2021 and yeah, he knows there’s a run of great riders missing but as he said on the PulpMX Show, he’s been the one to be out in years past. He’s been through a lot. In fact, he’s still going through things with his arm going numb. He was in Kansas when he called while getting stem cell therapy in said arm to try and get past this issue.

The sport’s better with Cianciarulo in it, and he’s sort of an open book with how he’s feeling and how things are going. I was hanging out by the Kawasaki truck after the race and they were all very happy for Adam. It was a cool thing to see, for sure, and maybe he’ll do it again this Saturday.

Cianciarulo did say that in outdoors, with no whoops, his arm feels a bit better so there’s hope for this summer for the #9.

Oh look, another Lawrence brother won a title! This week it was Jett’s turn to celebrate although this was his fourth 250 title compared to his older brother Hunter’s first last week. So, the celebration was rather muted compared to Hunter’s. Jett’s lap in practice to get fastest time was something else man, he was on rails. Amazing to watch. He crashed in the first turn in his heat and came back to third. Jett shows a ton of maturity on the track again and again, he seems to only push as hard as he needs to. This race I’m sure he was content to get into third, he just needed to finish to win the title so I’m sure he was, like, whatever. Onto 450MX for the Jett.

At the beginning of the year I said that, that in my mind, Lawrence was ready to move up the 450 class. Look at the stats, he lost one race all year where he was actually trying, he led 60 laps to the next-best 16 (but we don’t have Triple Crown stats because why would the AMA ever keep track of those?) and if it wasn’t for the injuries to other riders that hurt the depth of the class, he would’ve clinched with three races to go. James Stewart, Ricky Carmichael, Jeremy McGrath, etc never stayed in the class as long as Jett did and yes, he’s in that class.

RJ Hampshire did win the main event though in a heroic ride. He caught leader Levi Kitchen, made the pass for the lead, hit neutral, went off the track, caught Kitchen again from a ways back and won the race, the second 250SX of his career. HE WAS SENDING IT. It was something to see, a lot of the times with RJ he does send it but he ends up on the ground. Hampshire’s desire is oftentimes linked to his right wrist and that’s not always a good combo. On this night though, it worked spectacularly! What a ride for RJ. Just please kids, I don’t advise riding like this a lot- it could end badly.

As far as Kitchen, he said he had some issues with lappers that held him back and I’m sure he wasn’t stoked on getting caught twice for the lead but to me, he rode great. Hampshire just rode an amazing race, and you have to give it to him. Sometimes, things like that happen but if you’re Kitchen it’s all a learning tool.

Allow me to get off course here. We have a 250SX class that regularly pits riders like Hampshire with 55 career 250SX starts versus Kitchen who has all of nine. It’s harder than ever to get out of 250SX and this was supposed to be a ‘get your feet wet in SX’ type of thing and here we have lifers like Hampshire, Jordon Smith, Chris Blose, J Mart, Oldenburg, etc, going against, well, kids. We all know that you mature physically, mentally in your early 20’s, then maybe peak around 25-30 years old. These vets have huge advantages over these kids. It doesn’t seem like the class is anything like what it started out as or was supposed to be.

Just junk the coasts and make it wide open. Stay in it as long as you want, make it a national class and if you have a bad year in 450’s and can’t get a ride, maybe you move down to a 250 team. Make the Futures more of an age thing for, say, 16-19 and you HAVE to race that and Bob’s your uncle. I don’t know for sure but whatever we’re doing now as a sport, ain’t working.

So many privateers set career or season best finish in Denver, it’s ridiculous. I mean, Anthony Rodriguez showed up and finished 11^th! Grant Harlan put his shoulder out last week and got a ninth! There are so many stories from the Islanders excelling I don’t have the room here to chronicle all of it. VIVA PRIVATEER ISLAND!!!

Speaking of the island, we’ve been doing this thing for five or six years now where we get a new Yamaha 450, raffle it and a bunch of other cool prizes off for PulpMX listeners and then give all the money away. Year after year the amount grows and grows, and the last two years, the folks at Feld have given us a race on Friday! Yeah! I can’t believe it either, despite years of me yelling about AMA stats, nets, tracks, purse money, etc., they still let me do this.

This year, we had $147,000 in sales (yes, that’s right- almost 25K more than last year!) and that went to the 22 riders in the race on Friday. We had a bunch of funny prop bets also which amounted to over 15K. Josh Cartwright took the lead when Freddie Noren crashed. Josh made over 30K. Cade Clason rode great to come from the back and grab second, Chase Marquier was third. If you bought a ticket, thanks everyone and also, thanks to Yamaha and all the industry partners we have who put up the prizes. What a cool concept and all in all, we’ve raised close to 500K for privateers the past few years.