Earlier this year, the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki team was enjoying a renaissance season, ripping to wins with a variety of riders in Monster Energy AMA Supercross and holding the red plates in both the 250SX East and West divisions. Austin Forkner won, Levi Kitchen won, Cameron McAdoo won. It was looking great!
At about that point, the team realized win number 300 might be close. The team marked its 200th win back at the Atlanta Supercross in 2011, courtesy of Dean Wilson. (Personally, I can't believe I was the one that wrote that story for the website back then. This means I'm getting old!) That was a pretty big deal at the time, because no team is more decorated in this sport, perhaps only rivaled by Team Honda’s dominance from 1982-1996, where it captured 13 out of 15 250 AMA Supercross Championships. Pro Circuit did its winning in the 125/250F classes, but its run has been incredibly long. When the team took win 200 back in 2011, it was 20 years deep, and probably stronger at that point than it had ever been! Win 200 came 21 days after win number 199, with Josh Hansen at Anaheim, and the next weekend at Daytona Blake Baggett scored win number 201.
Unfortunately, this year win 299 seemed to be a jinx along the road to 300. Forkner went out with a huge crash at Arlington, then McAdoo and Kitchen crashed into each other in Nashville. Both championships slipped away and the team only had one healthy rider by the time the AMA Pro Motocross Championship kicked off at Fox Raceway. There, Kitchen nearly won but ultimately the ticker remained at 299.
Enter Ty Masterpool, who wasn’t even on the team when it recorded win 299! He held off Haiden Deegan by inches to score a 2-1 overall win at the High Point National, pushing PC to win 300 as he earned his first ever win. Over the weekend at Spring Creek, Kitchen finally got his first-ever Pro Motocross overall, and now PC is up to 301.
SMX Statistician Clinton Fowler says 41 different riders have contributed to Pro Circuit’s victories. Courtesy of the Pro Circuit team, here’s a The List of those who won the most:
1: Ricky Carmichael (38 Wins)
Any surprise that the GOAT is also the GOAT of Pro Circuit? Ricky’s tenure was even more significant than the number of wins. He took the 1997 125 National Motocross Championship in his rookie pro season, and that marked Pro Circuit’s first-ever National Motocross Title. He added two more of those. He won a lot. No surprises here, or with the guy second on this list.
2: Ryan Villopoto (30)
Short red heads winning AMA National Motocross Championships right off the rip? Yup, let’s do it again with Ryan Villopoto, who won the outdoor crown in his first pro season (2006) and collected three straight. He and Carmichael also have one regional supercross championship apiece. They were really, really good.
3: (Tied) Adam Cianciarulo (18)
AC was getting anointed as the next RC and RV even when he was a little guy on Kawasaki minis and was on his way by winning the first supercross he ever entered, at Dallas in 2014. Even RC and RV didn’t do that. Unfortunately, tons of injuries soon followed, and it almost seemed like hope was lost. Adam dug out and Mitch Payton and Kawasaki stuck with him. He ended up winning quite a bit, culminating with the 2019 250 National Motocross Championship, and he’s tied for third all-time in Pro Circuit wins.
3: Tied Christophe Pourcel (18)
Ah the crafty Frenchman! His story is getting forgotten as time rolls on, but Pourcel had an unorthodox approach to racing and qualifying that made him fun to watch. You just never knew what you were going to get from the guy, except somehow, he turned it into wins, a lot. Pourcel netted two 250SX East Region Championships and won a bunch of AMA Nationals, but those motocross titles slipped away in heartbreaking fashion.
5: Blake Baggett (17)
El Chupacabra! Speaking of unorthodox ways to win, Baggett would routinely wait until the halfway mark of a moto to drop the hammer and blow past guys en route to the front. He was more prolific in motocross than supercross, to the tune of the 2012 National Motocross Championship.
6: Austin Forkner (14)
Fourteen wins and counting? Forkner, as mentioned, won a supercross this year. His contract is supposedly up, but he’s been linked to re-sign with the team for 2025. Can he climb further up this list?
7: Dean Wilson (13)
The man who scored win 200 for the team, Wilson is also the 2011 250 National Motocross Champion. Dean won races indoors and out but the supercross titles eluded him. Definitely a big part of PC’s dominant years on the KX250Fs, though.
8: Jeremy McGrath (12)
Yes, the King of Supercross started off right here. He collected one 125 SX win (Las Vegas, 1990) while still part of Kawasaki Team Green. For 1991 he became one of the founding members of the Peak/Pro Circuit Honda team (which became today’s Pro Circuit Kawasaki squad). McGrath won early and often that season and the next. He’s not higher on this list because he never won an AMA Motocross National for Pro Circuit.
9: Joey Savatgy (12)
Joey won lots of races for this team indoors and out against high-end comp, but never scored that elusive title. The 2017 250SX East Region loss to Zach Osborne might be the closest anyone has ever come to a title without getting it. He’s still trying, now as a member of factory Triumph.
10: Tied. Jake Weimer (11)
Jake won a few AMA Nationals but did more damage in supercross, where he scored a 250 West Region Championship. Like Savatgy and many on this list, he turned that into a Monster Energy Kawasaki 450 ride for a bit.
10: Tied. Ivan Tedesco (11)
Hot Sauce was a beast on KX250Fs, which was key because he was the one who got the ball rolling with Pro Circuit winning with four strokes. His three titles in two seasons (two 250SX, one 250MX) proved Pro Circuit could make 250Fs just as well as 125s.
12: Grant Langston (10)
We’ll wrap this with the final rider to collect double-digit wins for Pro Circuit. GL had a rough go trying to make KTM 250 two-strokes work in supercross, but Mitch Payton rebuilt his career on those trick KX250Fs. GL won two 250 Regional Championships in 2005 and 2006. Even though he was better outdoors, he surprisingly never won that championship, as injuries prevented him from battling Tedesco (’05) or Villopoto (’06).
The rest: No mention of Pro Circuit’s wins is complete without a shout to the late Brian Swink, who collected the first victory for the team at the 1991 AMA Supercross opener in Orlando. That was also the team’s first race ever, and they won it!
Owner Mitch Payton had been helping quite a few of the factory teams with performance parts for years, and in 1991 Honda moved its entire factory 125 program over to him. Mitch revolutionized the sport with a unified, team look and outside sponsorship money (which is now copied by all the top 250F teams). The team won on Hondas in 1991 and 1992, but then Team Honda took the factory 125 program back for 1993. Mitch and company scrambled together some Kawasaki support through Team Green for ’93, just trying to keep things going. They would eventually become Kawasaki’s sole factory effort. How did they do on Kawasakis when they started? Like two years earlier on Hondas, the team won the first race it ever entered on a Kawasaki, via Jimmy Gaddis.
You can read all about that key 1993 season that paved the way for today, via Steve Matthes’ epic long form Story Season on the Brink.
