“I've just been outside the podium, you know, I've gone like 5-3, 4-4, just been kind of just one point outside the podium,” said Jason Anderson. The Monster Energy Kawasaki rider has been in the 450 Pro Motocross fight all season, but didn’t have the podium spot to show for it until Washougal. The 31-year old hasn’t given up.
“I just honestly haven't had it through the whole moto to be able to stay with these guys,” he said. “We've been working on our motorcycle and we've made some changes and I think it's starting to show. I'm getting more comfortable. We're still first year with this Kawi so we're just trying to get it better and learning about it, and obviously, these guys aren't making it easy. Chase (Sexton) is riding really well. Yeah, it's tough out there. This 450 class, it's the top dudes and we all know how to race.”
Anderson does seem to have something going at Washougal, though, with three-straight podiums now. His 2022 podium wasn’t a surprise because he was strong all season, in 2023 it was impressive because he was coming back from injuries in Monster Energy Supercross.
“It honestly took me a while to have some good results here,” he says. “I think my first podium here was in ‘22. But these last three years I've kind of gelled with it really nicely and it’s really nice to be able to come here. I always enjoy the northwest. Even if I didn't have the results. It's just beautiful. Track’s fun. It's tricky. But, it's a nice break for us because I think that Southwick, RedBud, Millville is really tough on us. You know, you get really worn out and you come up here and it's nice to have no humidity and some good weather.”
It’s been said that Washougal feels narrow and can be hard to pass on. Anderson backed that up, but had some honesty about Sexton’s next-level pace.
“Yeah, this track is definitely hard to pass on, I think,” he said. “My first moto, I feel like I had a little bit of pace on Justin [Cooper] and I just could never figure out a way to get around him and it was tough for me. Luckily I think like Chase has a good amount of pace on everyone. So it works out a little bit easier for him right now. But for me, I just feel like my pace, even if it's a little bit better than, like Justin Cooper, he's still good enough to be able to keep me behind him. And today it was more tilled up, rutty. So it was a little harder to move around.”
Anderson found one heck of a way to make passes early in moto two, though. He passed Cooper and Hunter Lawrence in one corner over on the back side of Horsepower Hill.
“At the beginning of the day they made all those rollers on the inside, like, really, really steep. So no one was really using them and then on the site lap [for moto two] they went over that roller I think with the skiddy [skid steer] and that kind of made it more shallow. So it kind of turned into like the main race line. When I went up the hill, it was Justin and Hunter to the left of me and when they didn't go to that roller, I just went to it to see what would happen. It was actually really cool to be able to go by him because like this, this track is, it would have been tough for me to get by Hunter and, and Justin. It could have taken me 10 laps to be able to get by both of them if I was riding well. So it was nice to, you know, zap them right there. It was nice to just ride out front lead laps and kind of find my groove a little bit.”
Anderson led nearly twenty minutes of moto two before Sexton tracked him down. No one else challenged him. While it might be easy for the veteran, sitting on the first year of a new two-year deal with his team, to mail it in, he dug deep. During the week, he's grinding down at ClubMX to improve his outdoor game, and the Kawasaki team often comes in to visit and test. The work never stops, the pursuit of podiums never stops.
