After Qualifying Crash, Justin Cooper on Spring Creek: “I’m glad we got through the day”
After a qualifying crash early in the morning at the Spring Creek National, Justin Cooper’s final line of his post-race quote explains it: “I’m glad we got through the day.” Cooper toughed out a 5-13 day in Minnesota, his worst race by far this summer as he had been fifth or better in the previous six rounds. It was not great, and he was laboring, but the key here is he takes over the 450SMX SuperMotocross World Championship qualifying standings lead.
He was likely going to overtake his teammate Cooper Webb for P1 in the 450SMX standings before the start of the SMX Playoffs in September, but with Webb’s knee injury at RedBud MX sidelining him for the remainder of Pro Motocross, the #32 machine entered round 24 with a 14-point gap and left with a 12-point advantage. Remember, Cooper was over 80 points behind Webb when Pro Motocross started, so he made up a ton of ground. Check back here Tuesday for a more in-depth look at the SMX qualifying standings following Spring Creek.
Cooper’s full quote in the Yamaha release:
“It was a tough day at Millville. I hit the deck pretty hard in the first qualifying session. My first moto wasn’t too bad, and we were able to hold on for fifth, but I was definitely hurting in Moto 2. I’m glad we got through the day. We’ve got one more before the summer break, so we’ll keep pushing.”
Watch Cooper's crash below, captured by our own Tom Journet.
As far as Eli Tomac’s day went, we did not get much from the Colorado native post-race following a 6-9 day for seventh overall. Tomac’s post-race quote read:
“It was a difficult couple of motos this weekend. We’ll get back to work and try to be stronger next weekend.”
Rich Simmons, Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing 450 Team Manager, said the following:
“Another tough race for us, starting with Justin’s crash in Q1. He wasn’t feeling great after that and did his best to get through the day. We had a good week of testing with Eli, but it didn’t seem to translate to the race. We’ll go back to work this week.”
