Looking ahead to 2026, it’s shaping up as a banner year with top riders and former champions on new teams—besides Anderson there’s Eli Tomac on KTM and Chase Sexton on Kawasaki. And for the most, everyone has stayed healthy, with the exception of RJ Hampshire (big crash recently and broken scapula and ribs), Justin Barcia (recovering from broken collarbone), and Jordon Smith (recovering from shoulder surgery) but Hampshire and Barcia are expected to be on the gate at A1. I probably speak for a lot of people when I say I can’t wait to see Justin on his new #51 Troy Lee Designs Red Bull Ducati Factory Racing Desmo450 MX. 

And of course, Jo Shimoda is still recovering from the big crash he had last month, but he was able to go to Japan to be celebrated in his home country as the 250SMX World Champion. He was also named the winner of the “Fighting Spirit” award, which is a prestigious award that’s part of the Japanese Professional Sports Grand Prize. And that’s saying a lot, because Japan also had a banner year in Major League Baseball with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshi Yamamoto (which would be a great name for a SuperMotocross rider!) starring in the World Series. Jo won’t be back until well into the SX tour.

I mentioned Ducati before and Triumph is expanding their SMX program in 2026, which means we will see two new OEMs in the 450SX Class beginning with Anaheim. At first Smith, Triumph’s first-ever AMA winner, was to be on the TF 450-X to start the ’26 SMX season but he’s not going to be healed up in time, so the team announced that their other veteran, Austin Forkner, would do the first six rounds of 450SX instead. Austin has been around for more than a decade now, but injuries have plagued his career. Hard to believe that he will finally be racing a 450 for the first time in 2026.

One other thing that you may have missed is the fact that in 2026 all but two of the 17 rounds of Monster Energy AMA Supercross will begin at 7 p.m. ET time, which means the Anaheim rounds, San Diego, Glendale, and the rest of the West Coast races will actually start at 4 p.m. local time. The reason is the viewership numbers in the East, which are far better for races that end at a decent hour and not after midnight. It also means many riders will be heading for the airports as soon as racing is over for a chance to catch the last flights home every Saturday night.

View the full 2026 SX broadcast schedule here

And our social media friend Josh Gagnon (@AlwaysBelieve331) has his annual countdown up and running; here are this week's entries, as Anaheim is now 22 days away. Look for Josh's page on Instagram and give him a follow...

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a great holiday week. Hopefully, Santa Claus delivers, and you and yours will enjoy this one last quiet week before it’s time to go racing again!

Preview Shows Are Here! (Jason Weigandt)

Is it already that time? It is! You surely don't have all your Christmas shopping done yet but we're less than a week out from the big day, so here comes our annual Monster Energy Racer X Supercross Preview Shows. As we have done for a dozen years or so, Steve Matthes, Jason Thomas, and I get together for a debate, laugh, and information-filled series of videos previewing the new season. We also stick Kris Keefer at a desk over to the side to discuss the bikes of the top riders. Episode one went live this morning on our YouTube channel, and we have three more 450 shows coming, plus a 250 show we will shoot in January. Yes, we're pushing the 250 show back because we think teams are actually going to tell us what divisions the riders will race. We'll wait until then. All told, we'll give nearly four hours of pre-season content over five episodes. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll demand we pull Steve off these shows. Again, it's an annual thing!

Please watch. Thanks to sponsors Monster Energy, Fly Racing, Maxima, Motosport, and Engine Ice for the backing, thanks to Matthes' PulpMX guru Travis Marx for running cameras, and thanks to our own Tom Journet for editing. Merry Christmas, everyone!

OAI (Matthes)

As you read this, I'll be heading down to the legendary Perris Raceway to spin some laps courtesy of Yamaha and their OAI program. What's OAI? Well, it's a program Yamaha has come up with that helps non-profits and others that need help to keep tracks and trails open. It's $10 from every unit they sell, and they take applications from people that could use some money to keep people riding or driving Yamahas. Really cool idea, Yamaha's been giving back to the sport for a long time. In fact, they gave me 10K for PulpMX Gives Back to help injured racers! So, I don't know all the details yet, but they helped Perris with something in order to keep Southern California's oldest moto track operating properly. Super cool of them and looking forward to spinning some laps.

Also, Weege sent me a photo of Team Yamaha on the podium at A1 2004 when they (we) swept the podium with Reed, Ferry, and Vuillemin. The thing is, I was Ferry's mechanic and not on the podium! Not a highlight of my life, that's for sure. He asked me for the story and so here it is.

I had been working on a yearly work visa every year as a mechanic and there were some complications with it going into the 2005 season. Sooooo yeah, I kind of had to get married to my then-girlfriend Angie (still my wife ICYWW!) to legally work in the USA. So, we got married and filed all the paperwork for the green card. But there was this period between the expiration of the work visa and getting the green card, and Yamaha couldn't have me working for them in that time. We worked out a deal where Ferry would pay directly to my Canadian company, but I worked for Ferry and not "Yamaha." So, I was at the test track during the weeks, building the race bikes, working on practice bikes and all that, but just not AT Yamaha (I did it all at the test track out of the box van) and, yeah, not at the races either. So, Bob Oliver was Timmy's mechanic at the races (and let's face it, he was better than me anyways—dude's a legend!) Bob was there, I think, the first two or three rounds until Ferry broke his wrist and missed some time. So yeah, "we" swept the podium and I was just chilling in the stands watching the bike I build get on the box. Again, not awesome for me but whatever, good for the whole team to do something like that, I have to think that we were probably the only team that were not on Hondas to ever sweep a 450SX podium? 

Pro Perspective (Jason Thomas)

As boot camp starts to see the end on the horizon, trainers will begin to think about a method called “tapering.” While I’m not an expert and don’t have any fitness degrees, I have been through a boot camp or 15 before. I know the in’s and out’s and the why. For weeks and months now, riders have been logging volume. Lots of miles, lots of laps, and lots of long days putting their body through the paces of all things boot camp. That volume is all about building a base. That base will provide the foundation of fitness that riders rely on for the 31 rounds of SMX. Training during the season is purely maintenance and peaking on race day. The base fitness created in the off-season (or honed anyway) is pivotal for support when fatigue sets in. It’s the whole reason for boot camp.

Now that the base is in place, the taper comes into play. Tapering is basically winding down the volume and redirecting efforts into shorter, more intense bursts of effort. It’s a focusing and narrowing of energy. Being able to churn 75 miles on a bicycle is useless if a rider can’t trigger a high energy burst for the first few laps. This tapering and shift to sprinting will bring balance to the overall program. Timing varies but it’s always around the holidays when the tapering word is used daily. Instead of a two-three-hour bike ride and 100 laps, riders will do a one-hour bike ride in a higher heart rate zone and less laps but full noise. It’s time to sharpen the spear, so to speak. For some, these days are easier, some they are harder. That depends on what the preference is. Volume monsters don’t mind the endless agony of the early days while the sprinter variety love the end where they shine. Different strokes. One thing’s for sure, everyone loves to see the end nearing and a distant, barely visible light on the horizon that is Anaheim.

Why Is Yamaha Winning Almost All The 2026 450 Shootouts? (Keefer)

I took some time and wrote a big article over on Steve's site (Pulpmx.com) on how/why the 2026 YZ450F is winning all of these media shootouts that have been happening the past few weeks. Yamaha changed their YZ450F quite a bit from 2025 so winning these shootouts with a redesigned chassis and updated engine is pretty rare. I also go into detail on if shootouts are a still a relevant source of information for the consumer that is in the market for a new bike. Is the shootout model old school and made more for the print style media era or does it really have a place in today's digital world? Read it on PulpMX.com.

Last Win Ads of 2025 (DC)

Since the 2025 racing season is now officially over, it's time to wrap up the win ads for the season in Cycle News. FMF, Dunlop, and Yoshimura all used collage-like designs to show all of their wins and titles over the year, as they should—all three had lots of success in 2025, too much to narrow down on a single Cycle News spread. As far as individual races went, Suzuki gave Jason Anderson's WSX win and championship a spread, while Max Anstie's SX2 championship earned him some love from Pod Knee Braces. Finally, Nitro Mousse celebrated their recent Baja 100 sweep with the SLR Honda team, Hero Racing, and Norman Racing.

Winter Wonderland (Mitch Kendra)

Since it has been a cold and snowy start to the winter season here in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, there is not much riding going on here like there is say in Florida or California. It is unfortunate since this is the "off-season" from SMX and the time of the year when we can ride our own bikes...only for it to be too snowy to do so! 

However, SwitchbackMX here in Butler, Pennsylvania (about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh) has their indoor track open again this winter season. Their winter racing series is going on now, and Brandon Croney went last weekend to snag some photos, then sent us his favorite ones. If you’re in the area, check it out! Follow the track on Instagram (@switchbackmx) for updates.

Photos by Brandon Croney

Hey, Watch It! 

LOGGED OUT | Josh Hill 🪵

Hunter and Jett and Chance do some free-riding—slowly—in the hills:

Ken Roczen Takes on Carson Brown for Final Battle at Pastranaland (2006 RM 250)

A Supercross Track But Every Jump Is Over Water

Supercross Champion Cooper Webb's preseason prep, as well as the Yamaha Champion's Dinner:

The Toyota Redlands BarX Yamaha is ready to go for A1 after some team shoots this week:

Head-Scratching Headline/s of the Week 

"Chonky Kitties Beware: Ozempic for Cats Is on the Way"—Vice

"From booze to black belts: Virginia's drunk raccoon suspected in karate shop break-in"

"Sorry, France, the world's best bubbly is British"—BBC

"29 jars of weed left on sidewalk in apparent gesture of holiday cheer"—Fox 40

"Japanese Railway Pleads With Photographers to Stop Being Dangerously Dumb"

"LSU, Auburn, Texas State, Western Kentucky, Tulane, Georgia State, ????? – Transfer Portal Enthusiast, T.J. Finley is Attempting to Transfer to His 7th School in 7 Seasons" -Barstool Sports

"Drone drops steak and crab legs for prisoner feast but South Carolina guards find it first"—AP 

Random Notes

The blueprint for the Ricky Carmichael-designed Daytona Supercross track was released this week. “Looks like a classic Daytona track. My favorite thing about Daytona is how the layout breaks down for the Main Events; it has all the technical aspects that bring the whole evening together,” said Eli Tomac, seven-time DAYTONA Supercross champion. “It always looks good, with high-speed sections, technical rhythm lanes, and those motocross-style segments mixed in. It’s a really nice blend. I am ready for it and always have been.”

A lot of passionate, creative people work to make Racer X the best it can be, but our biggest source of inspiration is, quite simply, you! All of us at Racer X would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to complete our Readers' Choice survey. The better we know our readers and audience, the better we can make everything we do. For completing the survey, you'll receive a free 3-month digital subscription to Racer X Illustrated! Oh, and you'll also be entered to win a NIU XQi3 WILD bike, a VP Racing Fuels prize pack, a Bob the Cooler 75qt hard cooler, 5 Bob the Cooler 40oz tumblers, 3 Renthal control kits (bars, bar pads, grips), a Risk Racing starting gate, and a SHOEI VFX-EVO Sparkle helmet and bag! Winners will be announced on February 2nd. (Subscription confirmations will be sent after the survey is finished.)

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