7: Deano’s back

Dean Wilson spent the winter on a world tour but jumped at the opportunity to ride fill in for the Lawrences on a Honda HRC bike. He ended up 17th in his debut last weekend when arm pump got him, but bounced back huge in East Rutherford, getting a ninth. Dean spent most of the main in an epic battle with Team Tedder’s Justin Hill. On the PulpMX Show this week, Dean talked about how pumped the team was with his performance. “After the race, Lars (Lindstrom, team manager) and Cam (Camera, who is usually Hunter Lawrence’s mechanic), you would have thought Hunter just won a main!” he joked. “They were so pumped with my ninth place, like over the moon. I’m thinking in my head, like they went undefeated seasons, won championships and they’re amped over this ninth place?” Having Dean at the races is great for the sport and with performance like this, it adds some depth to the 450 field late in the season.

6: Forkner shows some life

Pre-season predictions for Triumph’s Austin Forkner were all over the map, but even his biggest critics may not have seen things going this way. Coming into the weekend Forkner had been to multiple LCQ’s and was invisible for much of the season. He finally showed some life in East Rutherford. He was solid in both qualifying sessions, ending up fourth overall. In the main, Forkner ran fifth for most of the main event, but crashed with two to go and fell back to seventh. The result tied his season best. He crashed several times throughout the day, but it was the fastest and most aggressive Austin has looked on Triumph. Forkner may be deep into a rebuild, but he is the only rider on the team that has been to every scheduled race, which is huge. If he can continue to build, there is reason to believe we could see Forkner in Pro Circuit form at some point.

5: Bam’s tough season

Despite showing some signs of life recently, it has been a trying 2025 season Justin Barcia. He has yet to land on the podium and things have gotten even more frustrating over the last two weekends. Leading up to Philly, Barcia had a crash during the week where a lever ended up crushing his finger. He found that nothing was broken and taped it up for the weekend, but it still looked terrible and likely didn’t feel much better. He ended up getting the holeshot in the main event and it looked like this could be the breakout performance he has been needing. That lasted about half a lap as Barcia lost his rear brake and went straight over a berm. This weekend in East Rutherford Bam found himself in a battle for third with Plessinger. Just as it seemed like he had broken AP to secure a spot on the podium, he had a huge crash in the whoops, over the bars, mangling the bike. Barcia went for a pit stop and finished the race in 18th. Barcia is looking for a ride for 2026 and is desperate to add a podium to his resume. He will try again this weekend in Pittsburgh.

4: Ferrandis heating up

Phoenix Honda’s Dylan Ferrandis has been starting to string together some solid results over the past couple of weeks. In East Rutherford, Dylan charged from 13th to fifth, tying a season best. Dylan was bummed out to miss out on the HRC fill-in ride, but HRC has been stepping up with parts such as a factory transmission. On Monday’s PulpMX Show, Dylan talked about his improvement over the last few races saying, “I’m at my best of this season. Some crashes, some small injuries, and it was a new bike for us, the new Honda. Even if I felt good on it all year, you can always improve a little bit and everybody, every racer, every team are improving their bike. If you stay where you were at A1, it is hard to compete at this time of the season. We upgraded the bike, I got some upgrades from HRC, so I think that’s why I am getting better now.”

3: Sexton Makes a Statement

Red Bull KTM’s Chase Sexton put on a clinic inside of MetLife on Saturday night. When the gate dropped for the main event, he put in one of the most dominant performances in recent memory. His title rival Cooper Webb started right behind him and simply couldn’t hang. Sexton’s best lap was .75 seconds faster than Webb and he was over a second a lap faster for much of the race. The lead got near 20 seconds before he backed it down late in the race. Chase was elite in skimming the rutted whoops with ease. Will that whoop scenario develop again? East Rutherford’s back-to-back whoop sections and rutted conditions gave him an undeniable advantage. There’s still so much to play for in these final three weeks.