1. Championship Gets Turned on Its Head
Honda HRC Progressive’s Hunter Lawrence has been nearly perfect over the past month. Winning three of the last four rounds, Hunter had all the momentum, but that all came to a screeching halt in Detroit.
After a mediocre start, Lawrence was able to charge up to third within a couple laps and began to close in on Ken Roczen and Chase Sexton. Just when Hunter was on the verge of extending his points lead and taking firm control of the championship battle, he found himself on his head. Lawrence had a huge crash in the whoops. Fortunately, he was able to get up, but his front brake was damaged. He fell again trying to make his way to the mechanics area with the front wheel locking up, and by the time he was able to rejoin the race, he was a lap down and without a front brake. He would then have a third crash that collected Christian Craig and ended up taking 18th. Hunter will have to hand the red plate over to Eli Tomac for St. Louis, but according to the Honda PR, Hunter is healthy and ready for redemption next weekend.
Eli Tomac had a night he would rather forget as well. In fact, post-race discussions have been focused on what may be wrong with Eli rather than him retaking the points lead. Eli lacked his trademark intensity all day and in the main event, he put up no fight against Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Justin Cooper as he made his way by for fourth place. However, Tomac was able to respond to a late race charge from Cooper Webb. Webb had gotten to within a couple seconds of Eli, and Eli was able to pick up his pace and fend off the defending champion and hang on for fifth.
Had this been a one-off bad race, we could probably chalk Detroit up to a weirdo Tomac ride, but one week after getting beat by over 30 seconds, it’s hard to believe he has not been dealing with some sort of ailment over the past two weeks. They like to keep things quiet over at the Tomac camp, so it’s unlikely we’ll hear exactly what’s going on anytime soon, but he needs to get out of this slump ASAP if he wants to take advantage of the gift he was given by Lawrence in Detroit.
2. Ken Roczen’s Big Win
Progressive Insurance Cycle Gear Suzuki’s Ken Roczen has been on rails the past couple races but has been unable to translate that into a win. Roczen was able to seal the deal in Detroit, grabbing his second win of the season and the 25th of his 450SX career. This marks the first multi-win season for Roczen since 2021, and more importantly, with Lawrence’s misfortune, and Tomac’s off-night, Kenny now sits just fourteen points behind Tomac. With momentum on his side, and the two championship leaders coming off bad nights, this championship just became a very real possibility.
Roczen has voiced his frustration with the mantra that has been created about him falling off at the end of Championships. If there was ever a time to put that to rest, it would be over the next six weeks.
3. Mookie’s Back
Rockstar Energy Husqvarna’s Malcolm Stewart is lucky to be racing after his A1 incident with Justin Barcia. He has had to deal with a shoulder injury throughout the season but everybody, Stewart included, knows it could have been much worse. Now that we are in the second half of the season, the shoulder has had time to heal and Stewart is beginning to hit his stride. Last weekend in Birmingham he got his first top five of the season, and he topped that in Detroit with his first podium finish. Malcom got into fourth early and inherited third when Hunter Lawrence went down.
After the race Stewart admitted that A1 not only took a hit to his body, but to his attitude. He credited the off weekend as an opportunity to have a mental reset and “just be Malcolm.” He joked that getting back to himself meant doing some more fishing but also noted that he found himself too worried about what others were doing while he was forced to take it easy to recover from his injury. It has been an impressive bounce back, and the sport is more fun with Mookie battling up front.
4. Sexton’s Return.
Despite getting a win at A2, Chase Sexton’s time at Monster Energy Kawasaki has gotten off to a rocky start. That win was his only podium finish through the first seven races, and a midweek crash prior to Daytona forced Chase to sit out three rounds before returning this weekend in Detroit.
Maybe the time off was a good reset because Sexton was exceptionally good in the Motor City. He qualified P2, won his heat race, and got his second podium of the season finishing, P2 in the main. The team has been working hard to make Chase comfortable, even bringing in Kyle Chisolm, to help with some testing on the east coast. However, in the postrace press conference, he did not exactly clarify that progress was made with the bike but admitted that he needed to make a “mental turnaround” in his return to the races. Sexton’s season remains a mystery, but hey, Detroit was a step in the right direction.
5. Simonson for Save of the Year
Devin Simonson has been a revelation for ClubMX Yamaha in 2026. He seemed to have found another level of speed in Detroit, qualifying a career best third overall, but it’s not his results in Detroit that have people talking. In fact, on paper you will see Simonson with a 19th place finish in the main event.
Early in the main Simonson was in third, battling his ClubMX teammate Coty Schock for the final podium position. The two of them were bar to bar in the turn leading into the triple with Schock on the inside. As they exited the turn, their lines came together and the contact shot Simonson off the side of the triple into the previous rhythm lane. Miraculously, Simonson landed a Kevin Windham-Esque transfer perfectly and dodged the oncoming traffic, then rejoined the track in that same turn he’d just gone through. It was one of the wildest moments of the season. A few laps later Simonson went down all by himself in the whoops and a bent brake rotor ended his race.
Simonson joined Steve Matthes, Weege, and JT on the Racer X Race Review show to talk about the incident saying, “It happened so fast, that I didn’t even have time to think, like it was pure reaction. There was never a time where I was like, ‘I think I am going to crash.’” He did not blame Schock for the incident but did comment that had Schock not come out of his line and into Devin’s it would never have happened. He also admitted that losing that track position in the incident flustered him and probably led to the crash in the whoops. It may not have been the result Simonson was looking for, but he gave us something to remember.
6. Ferrandis Gets a Season Best
When we last saw TLD Ducati’s Dylan Ferrandis in Daytona, he had just found a new level of comfort on the Desmo 450. Dylan credited the arrival of a new part (a new Akrapovic header pipe) for the improved comfort, and it translated into a season-best qualifying effort. Unfortunately, Ferrandis suffered a thumb injury that same night that left him sidelined for a couple of weeks.
Dylan returned in Detroit and put in a season-best seventh-place finish in the main event. It was a quiet ride, but it must be a relief for the team to have a Ducati on track and continue to develop and prove that the bike can compete at the highest level. It is also important for Dylan to be racing and put in some results because both he and Barcia are on one-year contracts.
7. Henry Miller’s Career Best
Henry Miller has gone under the radar for a long time. Miller turned pro with the TiLube Honda team in 2016 and has accumulated several top ten finishes in 250SX and even a couple in 450MX over the course of his career. In Detroit, in his 45th career 250 SX start, Miller got a career best fifth. Miller ran fifth for most of the race and earned that result as straight up as it gets.
Obviously, it was a massive moment for Henry himself, but also for the up-and-coming MX6 Racing team. This second-year team originated out of New York and made a massive investment into their program, bringing in former TLD/ GasGas Crew Chief Olly Stone as team manager and moving the entire operation to SoCal. The investment paid off in Detroit with all three of their riders finishing inside the top 12.
8. Cole Davies’ Statement Win
Regardless of his two wins and red plate, Cole Davies had been extremely critical of himself through the first four rounds of the 250 East Division Championship. But in Detroit, Cole put on a performance that even he could be pumped with. He rounded the first turn in fifteenth and within five laps found himself in second, chasing down race leader Seth Hammaker. Davies caught Hammaker around halfway, blitzed by him through the whoops, and pulled out a twelve-second lead by the finish.
On the podium, Hammaker was a bit deflated with what just happened. Seth admitted that he had nothing for Cole, specifically in the whoops. He and the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki team have been working on getting the bike working better in the whoops and Seth claims they have made a lot of progress, but at the press conference commented, “It’s tough when you got Cole hitting them as good as he does, and the worse they get, I feel the better he gets in them.”
As we saw in the 450 class, anything can happen and a nine-point deficit is minor at this point in the series. However, stealing back some points at next weekend’s East/West Showdown seems critical to Hammaker’s championship hopes.
9. Casey Cochran Cannot Catch a Break.
Rockstar Energy Husqvarna’s Casey Cochran is in his third professional season, yet his Supercross career has barely taken off. Cochran won the 2023 SX Futures (now known as SMX Next) Championship and raced a few rounds of Futures in 2024 before turning pro late in the 250 East Division Series. He competed in three races with a best result of 15th in an East/West Showdown.
After missing all of the 2025 supercross season and missing the beginning of 2026 with a collarbone injury, Casey made his long awaited fourth career supercross start this past weekend in Detroit. It started off fine, qualifying tenth and finishing fifth in his heat race. Unfortunately, he DNF’d the main event. Cochran was running 13th and crashed on the same collarbone he injured preseason. He got up, but the collarbone was bothering him too much to finish the race. In an Instagram post Casey said, “We’ll give it another go soon.” Hopefully “soon” means in St. Louis but it seems likely he may be forced to miss more time. Another tough break for young Cochran, whose future is certainly up in the air.
10. Detroit’s Brutal Whoop Section
Every year there is one race with a set of whoops that creates more chaos than normal (A3 2022 comes to mind). The set inside Detroit’s Ford Field on Saturday night were those whoops for 2026. A few riders commented there were a lot of edges, so maybe it was that or maybe the half whoop at the end. Whatever it was, they wreaked havoc on riders all night.
Obviously, the incident involving Hunter Lawrence is the headliner, but there was utter chaos in the 250 class. While Cole Davies was nearly perfect through the tough set of whoops, his Monster Energy/Yamaha/Star Racing teammates were not as fortunate. Rookie Caden Dudney had a massive get off in qualifying and then a nearly identical crash while leading his heat race! Then, Nate Thrasher was leading for the first time this season until he had a huge crash in the whoops that put him out of the race. Next up was ClubMX Yamaha’s Coty Schock. Schock was poised for a second career podium until he got out shape and sent into the manager’s tower. Those are just some of the major incidents, but there were several other close calls throughout the night, and several riders (especially Dudney) will probably have nightmares about that set of whoops all week.
