Cooper Webb is now a race winner in the 450 class for Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing. The fact that 2-2-5 scores were enough to win the Triple Crown overall might seem a little surprising, but Webb winning is not. He's looked very good all season in his return to the team he raced for in the 250 class. What's different between Cooper now and his previous stint on a 450 Yamaha? How did he get the win despite feeling sick all weekend? He answered several questions in the post-race press conference.
Let's start with Cooper Webb. Big win for you. First of the season, we talked about it on Race day live. How do you feel to get it done in this Triple Crown format?
Cooper Webb: Oh man, it was awesome. You’ve got to be consistent all day. Like I keep saying, a little weird to not win a main event, but overall, man, it feels great to get a win for the first one of the season. It was a rough, rough end of the year last year. So it feels great to be up here back in the points swing and to represent the new team and all my new sponsors. It feels really awesome.
Last week in the press conference you just had an energy about you. Like, there was definitely a vibe that you were putting off, even at the end to kind of make sure that you congratulated AP [Aaron Plessinger]. It was a very like, in control mentality. How do you build that kind of vibe within yourself and can you feel that something's been building in these early few rounds of this championship? And if you look back to last year when you had your struggles, what's the difference?
I think for me, it's just overall everything's gelling really well. The bike change helped me attack a little bit harder, to where last year I relied a lot on consistency and speed was sometimes not there. I feel like now I have the speed when I need it. I feel like I can maneuver things a little bit better. And honestly, I'm really motivated, as always, but I'm having fun. I'm with a really solid group and I think just the change, mentally, was a great thing for me and I'm just enjoying putting in the work again. I have a great crew to ride with and the team is awesome and obviously it's not easy to one and two here [himself and Eli Tomac] to make us both happy and I feel like they've done a great job at making all three of us [Justin Cooper included] happy. I've always been a confident person, but I feel like this off season, towards the later half of it I was like, man, I'm doing things on the motorcycle that I know is gonna be good at the race. That’s the biggest thing, I think.
Can you describe the feeling when you do win and overall without winning one of the, one of the races on the night? What's that like for you?
It's tough because I'm doing math in my head on lap one. I think we all do when we're in a good spot going into the last one. It's one of those things that if you do really well in the first two, the third one sometimes is easy. Like I had a lot of wiggle room and I could just honestly have a solo ride in fifth place. But it is a little bit weird, you know, for sure to, to not go over the checkered flag first. But, I think that's kind of the unique thing about the Triple Crown is we've seen a lot of this happen and you can have big point swings and you can have one bad race, but then have two good ones and you end up on the podium or something like that. So it's never over for sure in these situations. I saw Jason right in front of me and he went down. That probably wasn't the best thing for me because it was instantly like I, you know, I can just kind of chill. But, I was grateful to put myself in that situation.
You're dealing with being sick this week. How did that impact you during the races? Is a Triple Crown harder for that? Yeah, for sure, it's not great but everybody has those weekends where you don't feel great and you just gotta kind of get through it. That's sport and I made the most of it, and put myself in great position. It was definitely tougher in a Triple Crown scenario for sure.
A quick question for Cooper and also for Eli. You guys have had different levels of popularity throughout your career with the fans. What's your thoughts on sort of the reaction to Jett tonight after all that's happened in the last week or so.
Webb: What happened?
The crowd gave him a pretty resounding booing.
Webb: Oh really.
Yeah. Just wondering the personal experience for your career. It's kind of a strange.
Webb: Yeah, I wasn't aware. So that's kind of crazy but yeah, we're in a world where there's a lot of a lot of crazy things that go around, especially online and stuff. So, I'm sure he like Eli would say the same, it's always best to keep your head down and you know, as much as you want sometimes knock somebody's ass out, you just gotta keep it all in. [Laughs] But yeah, that's pretty crazy. I didn't know that.
Eli Tomac: Yeah, it’s just, it's the sport, right? And everyone has those moments of popularity, of the ups and downs and I feel like that it can be part of the cycle. And then of course, nowadays, you know, the, the fire can be fueled by social media. So, you know, both side can escalate there.
Anaheim 2 (A2) - 450SX
January 28, 2024| Rider | Hometown | Motos | Bike | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Cooper Webb | Newport, NC  | 2 - 2 - 5 | Yamaha YZ450F |
| 2 |  Eli Tomac | Cortez, CO | 5 - 7 - 1 | Yamaha YZ450F |
| 3 |  Aaron Plessinger | Hamilton, OH | 6 - 4 - 3 | KTM 450 SX-F |
| 4 |  Jason Anderson | Edgewood, NM | 4 - 1 - 8 | Kawasaki KX450SR |
| 5 |  Chase Sexton | La Moille, IL | 1 - 11 - 2 | KTM 450 SX-F |
We came into the Super Motocross playoffs last year and you really wanted to go fight for wins and be a title threat. And obviously that wasn't the case. Just talk about how you got the bike comfortable to where you are now and how you kind of turn things around. Like you look completely different from last September. So, just talk about that mindset and the change with the bike and everything.
Yeah, SMX wasn't great for me. Looking back I was just not ready, that was the bottom line. I thought I was. I think it was one of those things where you get on a new bike and you've just got different scenery and you're very pumped. But I think it was good for me to go there and get really beat pretty good. And then I also figured some stuff out with my health side. That really helped, so that was good but mainly the bike and really trusting the direction of the team and working with the guys and having solid days. It’s crazy to see the turnaround from September to January. It was a massive difference. So, it's really encouraging and, I think for me, I always know supercross is something that comes maybe a little more natural for me and I'm always gonna hopefully be in a position to fight for a championship and I never lost sight of that. I think that was the biggest thing, even though it was a bit a little discouraging after SMX, I never lost sight of the main goal and neither did the team.
Obviously this bike is a Star bike, so it’s completely different from the factory Yamaha you raced in your first two years in the premier class. Can you just talk about the changes to the bike in general? How different is this now compared to 2018.
Why are you laughing AP? [Laughs] No, it's a lot different. Pretty much everything, you know, the personnel, the way the suspension is, like everything is completely different the way it's ran. Even though it's the same Yamaha motorcycle, it's a complete 360. Everyone's like, "Don't you have PTSD?" And I'm like, no, I know this group and the success we had on 250s and even when I raced those select 450 races as a 250 rider on their bike, I always did really well. So, yeah, it's kind of crazy to think how different it can be. But yeah, from every aspect of it, everything has changed and progressed.
The whoop sections, especially with three motos had a couple different options. Some guys were skimming, some guys were jumping, some were doing both. What was your decision making each lap and how you want to handle that section? Because it seemed like it was changing throughout the night.
Yeah, they were pretty challenging but like you said, if you got a good flow skimming, it was good. And then the one set, I think the 3-3-3 seemed to kind of be the way. And then, for me, it's always, you know, nice to jump because you can kind of save some energy to be honest. [Laughs] So that was kind of a lot I was sticking to. But yeah, I thought it was actually very like the way they got were pretty race besides maybe the, the one set. But yeah, two sets of whoops this weekend. So that's always a little bit of a challenge compared to one set. But yeah, I thought the track overall was a good track tonight.
