After switching teams in the off-season to Monster Energy Kawasaki, fans and media alike were wondering how long it would take for Chase Sexton to get back to his winning ways. Afterall, it had been even longer for Kawasaki, since 2022 in Salt Lake City the last time the brand won a round of Monster Energy Supercross in the 450 class. Chase came out swinging at Anaheim 1, topping the leader board in qualifying, but mistakes kept him off the podium in both of the first two rounds. At A2 though, he put it all together and get his first win of the season. Steve Matthes was able to catch up with Chase after the race.
Racer X: Alright, Chase Sexton, before we get into your race, Kawasaki broke their streak of no wins since 2022. I'm happy for those guys.
Chase Sexton: I’m more happy for them, than I am for myself. It's a good group of people and they deserve to win. It's crazy that it's taken them that long to win and Rango [mechanic], dude Rango was balling after the main event, it was cool.
I think of Stew and RV, and they just never stopped winning for a long time.
Well, it's time to get back there! It’s their turn at this point.
I gotta be honest, I was worried about you after the heat race, how bad was it for you?
I was bummed, yeah, I was mad [about crashing while leading]. You can be four seconds a lap faster but if you fall over every time you get on the track it's not going to help. So, I just told myself, the main event, I'm just going to go out there and ride at 80 or 90 percent and see how we do. And it worked out.
Early on, good little battle with Hunter [Lawrence].
Yeah, it was good, and Jason [Anderson]. I’m a little bummed at myself that I didn’t even look at the outside in the sand, I went inside on the hot lap and I am like, “No way they fixed the outside berm” and I go inside and Hunter just rides around the outside of me. And I'm like, “That was stupid.”
In the 250 main everyone went inside, in the 450 main everyone went outside because they fixed it.
Yeah, they fixed it and the sand is so weird because you can’t predict what it is going to do. Like a sand race outdoors you can kind of predict what it is going to do, but in supercross it's one little turn and it just changes so much because everyone is just hammering the gas. You don’t have that great of traction because it's supercross suspension. Yeah, I fell there during the heat race, that was stupid.
When you’re dealing with a guy like Anderson, like even Hunter admitted, “I don’t know how to pass that guy.” He will strike back right away, do you think about that?
I mean I just give him his room. Unless I have the pass made, I give him his space. Like, I am not going to close the inside when he has the wheel. Even off the start I could have forced it to the inside, but I'm not. One; it's the first lap of the race, he could take me down. I think in 2022 him and I got into it big time, just like in practice he was kinda messing [with me]. I have seen being on the bad side of him and I’ve also seen he’s older now and I am older and I think that stuff is gone. So, I just try to race him clean, hard. It's nice when I feel like I can get passed him in a rhythm section, so I don’t feel like I need to make a stupid pass. I knew he was going to pass me back in the whoops.
Because you went inside.
Well I jumped em, but he’s so good in the whoops, he can make that up. I feel like I have a decent relationship with most people on the track.....well, I mean, I don’t think Cooper’s [Webb] very happy with me.
The track itself, the whoops into the 3-3 seemed pretty sketchy, do you agree?
I don’t know. We’re in California and we have ruts like Indy. It did not rain that much. And also, the track never dried out from yesterday. That doesn’t make any sense to me. They put too much water, and they are like tilling the rhythms and then packing it.
The start looked like Unadilla!
We’ve had so many crashes this year, I feel like, already and I have a hard time thinking it's the riders. I mean yes, the riders at fault but I feel like a lot of it has to do with the tracks too. Like that 3-3 in the turn and even the rhythm section where [Ryder] Malinoski crashed, it's so rutted and so soft. Like this is not Indianapolis, a California track does not need to be that way. I feel like it was more hard packed yesterday in press. I just feel like they are building stuff, and I hate to say it, but I feel like I talk to them and I don’t really get much of a good response. They kind of take the fun away from the track, because I think there could have been way more rhythms done tonight but they make it so you can only do one rhythm. And it bothers me.
Looked like you were marking Hunter pretty well, I could see you look over. He did catch you a little bit at the end, but whatever.
Yeah, he put in a charge trying to catch me and I think that was his surge, and I was like, “If I can just manage this, I should have this in the bag.” When it comes to the end of the race, that’s one guy that you really don’t want behind you. I think him and Cooper [Webb] are the best guys at late race surges and I almost think Hunter is better, because he’s pretty gritty, and I know him pretty well. So I’m like, “I can’t let him get too close.” And I know he wants that first win.
