Nothing seems to come easy for Hunter Lawrence, who battled through years of injuries to eventually return as a front-line player in the 250 class. Even while dealing with rib injuries from a pre-season crash, he was on fire to start this AMA Pro Motocross Championship campaign, winning the first four races overall. Then a first-turn crash at RedBud led to a DNF, followed by another DNF due to bike problems at Southwick. Just like that, his points lead was gone, with rookie Haiden Deegan taking the red plates, and further, RJ Hampshire, Justin Cooper, and Jo Shimoda were all back into the points chase, as well.
This set up Spring Creek as a pivotal race, as Hunter needed to stop the bleeding in the points and reset the confidence for himself and the field. He more than accomplished that on Saturday. After taking the top time in qualifying, he started behind all of his title rivals and passed them all en route to a scintillating first-moto win. He had the second-moto win on lock, too, until a crash with two laps to go handed Cooper the lead. Justin Cooper snuck by to steal the moto win, but Hunter still took the overall with a 1-2 compared to Cooper’s 4-1. More importantly, Hunter now has the points lead again, plus the confidence that comes with being the best rider on the day in Minnesota. He added some thoughts via the post-race press conference.
Hunter, we'll start with you, being able to salvage nearly a perfect day. You almost had your 1-1 but a little tip over there, and now you've taken over the points lead. You made up 18 points today [on former series points leader Haiden Deegan]. So tell us about your day and tell us a little bit about that fall, that tip over that you had.
Hunter Lawrence: Yeah, it was a good day. Obviously second moto, yeah, just, you know, tired at the end and then jeez, I think I had like four lappers in front of me, a few on the downhill and around that corner and just, you know, they've got their own stuff going on and, as I do, and just last minute split decision to miss them and I just pushed the front, washed the front into the face of the wall jump. So, it wasn't ideal and then kind of took me a bit to get up. I like almost winded myself a bit and, and then I was like, trying to see where third place was and I didn't know Jo was there and then I kind of heard him on the last section. [Laughs] I'm like, all right, crap, I gotta dig again. So, it was close.
![Hunter Lawrence]()
Hunter Lawrence Align Media ![Hunter Lawrence]()
Hunter Lawrence Align Media
I had a bird's eye view of the announcer's tower, and I could see it looked to me like you were laboring a little bit to breathe. I know you've been struggling with some rib injuries and that couldn't have felt good falling on them. Did it hurt, reinjure, your ribs?
Yeah, I mean, I've had pretty bad luck with always falling onto the left side. They get a little bit better and then you just reinjure them. Yeah, gave them a good hit, of course we couldn't land on the other side! But, all good we got Doctor G [Dr. H. Rey Gubernick].
Speaking of tracks, today, the track was prepped a little different. It wasn't quite as deep as it was before. So you were faced with even more decisions on tire choices, for instance, you made a last minute decision to switch a tire right before the second moto, and then as you came in on the sighting lap, you guys decided to go back to the same tire that you ran in moto one, which was the scoop style tire that we see a lot often in the 250 class. Tell us about that decision and why you did it?
Yeah, it was, we went with the half cut for the sight lap. We thought, you know, the track was getting really dry and hard and a lot of square edge bumps in a lot of places, so we thought we had a pretty good plan with that. But then the sight lap there, they did enough dozer work and flattened enough stuff that made it softer than what it was. So, it was like, all right, we don't want to sacrifice the start and, and yeah, I went back to the scoop.
| Position | Rider | Hometown | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Hunter Lawrence | Landsborough, Australia  | 419 |
| 2 |  Justin Cooper | Cold Spring Harbor, NY  | 399 |
| 3 |  Jo Shimoda | Suzuka, Japan  | 393 |
| 4 |  Haiden Deegan | Temecula, CA | 371 |
| 5 |  Levi Kitchen | Washougal, WA | 322 |
A couple of questions from the internet here basically coming in from social media. Hunter, the sand section out there: do you feel like it's more technique? What does it take to get through the whoops?
I mean, good technique is obviously a huge part of getting through them, that combined with throttle control and just gripping with your knees and stuff because they got really pretty gnarly at the end of the day, like super short faces and, really, really steep. So you don't just want to hit it wide open because you're just gonna go sideways.
There were some shots on TV that looked like you went off the track and wrapped up some twine or something in your rear hub area or something?
No I was fine, I didn’t notice.
You didn't lose brakes or anything?
No, I didn’t notice anything. I’ll have to go back and watch the tape back.
