Sorry for the late column; we had some power outages here in Vegas. We had issues with the PulpMX Show Monday and Tuesday. I had Lewis Phillips here who wanted to go dirt bike riding for his upcoming job swap, and, yeah, excuses sure, but it's all the truth.
Better late than never though, and because Seattle is in the rear-view mirror, let's just go with some general thoughts on general things now that Monster Energy AMA Supercross is six rounds down, yeah?
Seattle was great for Eli Tomac as he grabbed his third win of the year in a gutty, smart ride in getting by Cooper Webb, who's no stranger to guts or smarts (or winning at Lumen Field).
As Weege mentioned earlier this week in an article, you could make a legit argument that Tomac could have five wins out of the six races. Only Anaheim 2 stands out as a race where he wasn't the best guy, and he was still on the podium there. Looking back at some of his other first six races of the season on Kawasaki and Yamaha, 2026 stands out as his:
-second most wins after 2023 (4 wins that year)
-tied for most podiums (4)
-second most laps led (2023 had more)
Eli Tomac: *almost better than ever on the KTM? Who would've thought!
See for yourself here from our buddy MX Reference:
Things I was most wrong about:
- Jorge Prado is just a top ten guy in 450SX.
- Eli Tomac isn't the same rider he was
- Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull would be good.
- The new Star Wars movies would be good.
- The Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup.
I bet the person most surprised that Cooper Webb didn't win Seattle was Cooper Webb. He rode very well; sometimes other riders are great, and that's what Eli Tomac was on this night.
Hunter Lawrence deserves some props for facing the media after colliding with Ken Roczen with two laps to go. It was his fault; he was a bit aggressive there, and he would've gotten KR94 (IMO) for third in the next corner or two. He took them both down, and afterwards, he talked about it from his point of view and took most of the blame. I've seen plenty of riders of Hunter's stature disappear after they make a mistake like that after the races.
In the department of "IDK Man," may I introduce you to Chase Sexton? I said last week I'm still on Sexton Island, and I still believe, and nothing has changed, but after Seattle, we lost some more members. They're out swimming to safety; maybe they're looking for Tomac Island, I'm not sure. I thought "we" were okay after that dramatic switch to Pro Circuit forks, link, and clamps—heck, "we" won Anaheim 2! But then the last two weeks, he just hasn't been himself in qualifying or in the main events. I saw he and the team went back to Florida this week, and I saw stock clamps on his bike, so that's where "we're" at.
I STILL BELIEVE IN SEXTON!!!!
By the way, something I was talking to Oscar Wirdeman over there at Kawasaki (Garrett Marchbanks' crew chief) about was that at some point at RCH with Ken Roczen, they literally had Kenny ride a stock RM-Z450 (when he was struggling to get a setup) and slowly added parts to it to address what he wanted the bike to do. Sometimes you go down rabbit holes and get lost, forget where you started from, and forget that you've taken whatever characteristics the stock bike was designed to have by the engineers and tried to make it do something else. Starting from a stock platform (because each bike DOES have a "feel") gets you back to center, and you don't take a bike that is a franken-bike of feelings, you know? Maybe that's something Kawasaki is doing this week in Florida?
Speaking of Kawasaki, former rider there Jake Weimer called into the PulpMX Show Tuesday night to address something that was bugging him. It was team manager Dan Fahie talking about how the team was always flexible with bike changes with Jake and Ryan Villopoto. Weimer went as far on the show to call Dan a liar. It was evident in Weimer's voice that he wasn't happy with his time over there in terms of Kawasaki's flexibility.
It's not up to me to decide that, but one thing I see on social media (because no one goes and listens to the entire interview) is that Jorge Prado last year and Chase Sexton's struggles this year are linked to Jake's time there with the same manager, and Jake himself says in the interview it's not.
We can see last year with all the changes and testing at ClubMX with Prado and then this year with the Pro Circuit stuff and testing that Kawasaki appears to be very flexible with its riders the last two years. So, I just think it's apples to oranges when talking about Weimer's time there with Fahie and what we see now.
Here's the video for you to watch the whole thing.
Levi Kitchen was, to me anyways, strangely happy after the main event. Look, he rode great, so maybe that's all it was, but also, his main competition, Haiden Deegan, slowed down to let him by and then caught/passed him for the win. Yes, when Deegan was pushing, Kitchen was still catching him, but Deegan gave him the pass and then made up that gap.
So, I thought Kitchen would be a bit bummed after the race, but he wasn't. He even gave Deegan knuckles, which indicated to me "good race," but Deegs was slowing up to take shots at him? Weird to me, but hey, Levi's the racer, so that's how he felt, so we're all good, I guess?
Not tripling onto the tabletop was killing Levi; he wasn't doing it as much as Deegs, and it was 0.8 quicker from people I talk to. There were some lappers out there that seemed to hurt Kitch more than Deegs, but hey man, it's racing. Anyways, great race to watch out there—Deegs keeps his streak going, and I guess there is a new kitchen in the chef!
Watch some highlights from that Kitchen/Deegan battle here:
By the way, I saw on my socials that there was a lot of consternation about lappers out there in both classes, and yeah, there were some moments. On a track like Seattle though, you gotta cut the guys some slack in my opinion. Oftentimes there's just one rut that's good, and those guys aren't good enough to start moving around and trusting a new line to help them jump something or whatever. It's not easy being lapped in conditions like that, and it's another reason why races like Seattle, Daytona, and Indy are exciting to watch.
However, I'm fully onboard, and I've been saying this for years—once you're two laps down, it's time to pull off. Black flag the guys; get them off the track. You're two laps down; it doesn't matter anymore. We're gonna save the track and save the leaders the trouble and help you call it a night, bro.
Did you know that Eli Tomac and Ken Roczen have led over 50 percent of the laps this season? Yeah, pretty crazy.
Also, with Roczen's Anaheim 2 and Tomac's Glendale heavily affecting their stats, it's still interesting to see after six races Hunter Lawrence's 2.75 first lap positions being much better than Roczen's 5.13 and Webb's 5.38. Almost two spots better for the #96. With it being more "Startcross" than ever before, Lawrence is consistently putting himself in a great spot.
Hunter's average holeshot position is even better than the other "big four," with it being over two spots better than Roczen's. Again, Tomac and Roczen's first lap and first turn crashes do skew this a bit, but no matter, H-Law is doing what he can to game this red plate without a win.
Thanks for reading this abbreviated OBS column; we'll be back next week at the regular time and regular length. Email me at matthes@racerxonline.com to chat about this or anything else.
