Before we get into the rest of Racerhead, today is 4/3 Day, which stands for not only April 3 but also the late Ken Block's rally car number. Block was iconic in the action sports world, first as the co-founder of DC Shoes, then later as the mastermind behind the Gymkhana line of stunt driving videos that have racked up millions of views. He was also a huge supporter of SMX, sponsoring some of the sport's biggest names, including Jeremy McGrath, Ricky Carmichael, Travis Pastrana, and many, many more. He was also a great friend and supporter of our magazine, Racer X, and he even appeared on the cover twice, alongside his rallying partner and teammate, Travis Pastrana. He posted on his social media a few years back, "My favorite mag cover ever: Racer X magazine with my buddy Travis Pastrana, shot during Gymkhana FIVE. Epic!"

Ken died three years ago in a freak snowmobile accident near his home in Park City, Utah, but his name and brands like Hoonigan live on. 4/3 Day 2026 is a 4.5-hour livestream fundraiser on April 3rd supporting 43 Institute, which is the Ken Block Foundation. The foundation's mission statement? "43 Institute exists to create pathways and provide resources for underserved, highly driven 'motivated misfits' whose aspirations lie in action sports, motorsports, and the creative arts.

The show is streaming live from Block House Racing HQ, hosted by Brian Scotto, Ron Zaras, and Zac Mertens, with friends of the organization dropping in throughout the day. It starts at 12 noon ET and will last 4.5 hours. You can watch it live or later on YouTube's Block House Racing channel. So hurry up and read this and then go watch and remember Ken Block. You can also visit: https://www.43i.org

And make sure you pay attention to the VIP family packages for Monster Energy Supercross, Pro Motocross, and the SuperMotocross World Championships!

Is Suzuki Back? (Jason Weigandt)

Is Ken Roczen's success inspiring Suzuki to really get back into the game? Ken and the PMG/HEP Suzuki team have done amazing things, but what about new bikes, bigger budgets, and more factory parts? For this week's Weege Show Wednesday, I interviewed Chris Wheeler from Suzuki. Wheeler started as a Suzuki racer himself, then a test rider, then a full-time staffer, and eventually began to head the U.S. race department about a decade ago. In that time, he's been trying to get the floodgates to open. He believes Japan is paying attention, but as of yet, nothing new is coming that he knows about.

Years ago, I visited Suzuki's HQ out in California. This was when Suzuki was still winning a ton of races with the Carmichael/Reed/Dungey group on dirt and the Matt Mladin/Ben Spies group in AMA Superbikes. Yet, the offices were stark. No championship display bikes, no posters, no ads. It was explained to me that the Japanese culture prefers to stay humble. Much of what we see from Suzuki of America is dictated by Japan. Wheeler told me this week about some of the challenges.

"There's always someone [a new Suzuki America President] rotating in from Japan, and that's what makes it very hard. I've been an employee since 2010, and I think there have been six different presidents. They all want to put their fingerprints on it, and some guys might be into pro racing, and some might be into something else. You don't know what you're going to get, and the first year, they tend to be conservative, so you almost lose a whole year of momentum. We're now on year two of our new president. But the bigger picture is Japan. There are new board members and stuff shifting over there. You can yell and scream all you want; I can, and it really doesn't do anything. It was really cool winning this weekend. That was an amazing race, and then we got an email from a higher-up saying, 'That was so inspiring.' To see that email, it inspired me! That tells you that they're paying attention."

What could be next for Suzuki? Hopefully, Ken Roczen's success—which honestly could include the AMA 450 Supercross Championship—pushes the brand to do more.

Pro Perspective (Jason Thomas)

The 250 SX East Championship is at a pivotal spot here in St. Louis. With Davies winning three in a row (albeit the penalty in Birmingham for Deegs), he has an opportunity to push this points lead to a precarious position. Another win, or at least besting the East, would push the points to double digits and put a lot of pressure on Hammaker and co. That's what's on the table.

The interesting part, in my opinion, is that I don't think that Davies is the outright best in the East. Yes, he has an enormous edge in the whoops. If we get tracks with race-changing whoops from here to the finale, Davies is in a great spot. My bet is that we don't, though. Most tracks will have deteriorated whoops that present alternatively fast ways to blitz like a madman. If that is true, I think Hammaker can find his wins. Seth has shown great segment speed, matching or surpassing Cole's in all other sections. His starts have been on point, too. It's really been the whoops that have caused the issue. Arlington was a problem and left him fourth, Indy saw a Race Two crash, and Detroit was a liability that rendered him defenseless against Davies.

Racing always involves nuance, and this East division is no different. I think there is a case to be made, however, that this one will be decided in one section each week. So goes the whoops, so goes the championship.

Schock to the System (Mitch Kendra)

Coty Schock crashed in the whoops and went into the team manager's tower Saturday night in the 250SX main event. If you remember, Schock also hit an over/under bridge a few years ago in Houston after he accidentally made contact with his teammate Cullin Park in the jump before going through the bridge. I think his wife joked on Saturday something like, "If there's a wall, there's a way!"

Wither Sexton? (Matthes)

We had Chase Sexton on Monday night's Pulpmx Show to talk about his triumphant return to 450SX with a heat race win and second place in the main. Only, I'm not so sure it as "triumphant" as it seemed to me. I could be wrong, but it feels like Sexton's not in a better place with the bike after being out with injury and Kawasaki having Kyle Chisholm help with testing. He mentioned he's going to have to accept what the bike can't do and ride around it. He's always a good interview and honest to a fault, so, again in my opinion, you could hear it in his voice that he's still not feeling as comfortable as he would like on the green machine. You can watch it for yourself here:

AMA-zing AGAIN (Matthes)

We reported last week that Ezra Lusk has left the rider relations role with the AMA after some baffling calls over the last few weeks. I tried to get Lusk to talk about it publicly, but he's not ready just yet. However, he did want to make it clear that it seems he was frustrated with the teams' and riders' responses, as well as some of the AMA calls. So we'll wait and see where Yogi goes. He's on the road to Loretta's also, which will be cool to see him come back.

We had Jeremy Albrecht on the show Monday as well, and he mentioned he's going to move into Lusk's role as well as remaining on top of the technical end of things like sound control. Albrecht, as good of a guy as there is, sort of challenged me to follow up with him down the road to see if things are better or not. I've been pretty vocal about what we've been seeing and not seeing lately (for example, Evan Ferry gets three forms of discipline for his pass attempt on Pierce Brown, while Cooper Webb gets nothing for his attempt on Jorge Prado) from the AMA.  It's still a process among everyone at the AMA on the penalties, and discussions take place, but it seems people at the AMA know the frustration in the paddock and are trying to be better. Let's hope so, and welcome back to this department, J-Bone!

The Chains of Switzerland (DC)

What a difference a year makes. On this same weekend last year, Tom Vialle was battling Seth Hammaker and RJ Hampshire to defend his 250 SX East championship in Monster Energy Supercross. The Frenchman, a two-time MX2 World Champion, was riding for Red Bull KTM as the series headed to a very soggy Foxborough in Massachusetts. Despite his GP background, Vialle struggled badly in the mud that night and finished dead last, scoring zero points for his 22nd place finish. It was the worst race of his career.

Fast forward one full year. Vialle is now back in Europe racing a Petronas Honda HRC CRF450 in the MXGP World Championship. The series went to Fraunfeld, Switzerland, for its third round. Vialle had gotten off to a good start in the championship and was behind only the sensational teenager Lucas Coenen of the Red Bull KTM team and his new Honda teammate, Jeffrey Herlings. It was another soggy weekend, just as it had been a year ago in Foxborough. Fortunately for him, this race went much better. Vialle ended up winning on a 450 for the first time in his career, going 1-6 on a very tricky Swiss track that wreaked havoc on the championship. Both Coenen and Herlings would end up throwing chains in the first moto in the exact same spot. It turns out there was a rock sticking out of a deep rut that knocked out both Lucas and Jeffrey. The French page @mxactu_ went out on the track and found the offending rock for this report:

As for Vialle, even though he had his struggles in the second moto, his overall win was arguably the biggest of his career to date. He's won a total of 45 Grand Prix races now, all of the rest coming on an orange 250. He did not take over the points lead, as both Coenen and Herlings salvaged their weekends with first-place and third-place finishes the second time out. But Vialle is now right there in the mix with them as the series takes Easter weekend off.

After the race Vialle said, "I really didn't know that I had won when I crossed the line. I thought I'd be on the podium because other riders didn't have two good scores, but I just wanted to try and pass as many guys as possible in that second moto. Still, it is very cool to have won the GP, my first in the MXGP class and my first with this new team and hopefully the first of many. It was a very tricky circuit and not something I'm used to, but I kept fighting until the end, and while I did make a couple of mistakes, it is good to know that I have been at the front on three different types of track."

According to our friend "MX Geoff" Meyer's MXLarge.com site, Vialle will be racing this weekend, on Monday actually, at the Dutch Masters race in Heerde, along with Herlings, Kawasaki's Romain Febvre, Husqvarna's Kay de Wolf, and more.

Legends of Canadian Motocross (DC)

While working on a project for Racer X Magazine, I came across a very cool website called Legends of Canadian Motocross (www.locmx.com). A man named Bill Petro is working to preserve moto history in Canada, which goes back even further than Pro Motocross in America. Petro collects and shares old photos and stories from back in the day, including some of the old Trans-AMA races and Grand Prix events that used to take place at long-gone tracks like Copetown. I told him that we had some photos in the Dick Miller Archives from those very early events. He replied with a famous photo he himself had taken back in '72. It was the instantly recognizable cross-up image of the late Jim Pomeroy, arguably one of the most famous images in the history of our sport. Here's his backstory on the iconic image you see here.

"Not sure if you are aware that the attached shot of Jim Pomeroy was captured that day. I submitted the picture to the CMA club magazine, and they put it on the cover," recalled Petro. "After Pomeroy won the Spanish GP in April of '73 (the first American to ever win a Grand Prix in motocross), I got a call from Bultaco USA saying they wanted to use the photo in an ad and offered me $125. I was blown away and, of course, said yes. I was later scolded by my photo teachers, saying I could have gotten more. After the ad ran, I forgot about it until thirty years later when Mitch Boehm (now editor of the AMA's American Motorcyclist magazine) contacted me wanting to find out more about the picture, saying he had the poster on his wall for years. I had no idea that a poster was made! To this day, I have not seen one, although many people confirmed that they had that poster on their wall. I started selling archival prints of the shot and would usually get a personal story about how that shot represented everything they dreamed about as a young motocross fan."

Well, I have that poster somewhere, and I will be sending it to Bill Petro very soon.

So what are the other photos in the running for "best motocross photo ever"? On my own list from the 1970s, I have Charles Morey's "Tony D. and the Jammer" image, which actually ran on the cover of Racer X Magazine some 30 years after he shot it at a 500 National in Ohio; Dick Miller's photo of Bob "Hurricane" Hannah coming out of Gravity Cavity at the '78 Unadilla 250cc U.S. Grand Prix; Marty Smith slamming a berm in a 1975 Honda advertisement; Jim "Greek" Gianatsis' image of Team Yamaha just chilling at a '77 125 National in Keithsburg, Illinois; and Roger DeCoster hitting a berm at the '75 Carlsbad 500cc U.S. Grand Prix—a photo so cool that Cycle News ran it on the cover, despite the fact that Roger did not actually win that race—his teammate Gerrit Wolsink did!

6D Max Goggle Introduction (Keefer)

6D is known for its superior helmet protection, but did you know that it has been working on a full helmet port-style goggle for over five years now? I have been wearing the Max goggle off and on for a little over four years myself, and to see the final production version for myself this week was really cool. The MAX Goggle is finally here, and I had the chance to ride in it at Glen Helen this week. Here's a link to the lowdown on the Max Goggle by 6D.

The experience of the Max goggle is something to be felt. It is a very strange feeling not having your standard goggle foam pressure up against your face while riding. It almost feels like you're in a street helmet, but after a few laps, you learn to appreciate how much ventilation you get, as well as how the lack of face pressure can actually relax you while riding. Now, I am not going to sit here and say this goggle is for everyone, but for riders that wear glasses, I feel this Max goggle will almost be a must-have. When you're used to the standard size MX goggle, you don't really appreciate how little peripheral vision you have until you wear the Max goggle out on the track. The amount of each corner I could make out from the apex on was simply crazy to me. I could see around the whole corner without having to flip my head around. The Max goggle does have a tear-off system and roll-off system, but the goggle will only mate to 6D's ATR-3. If you're looking for more information on the Max goggle, you can check out keeferinctesting.com or come back to the Racer X YouTube channel in the coming weeks for a full breakdown.

THIS WEEK'S WIN ADS

Suzuki and Ken Roczen got back on top of the box at the Detroit SX, which meant a Suzuki spread in Cycle News, as well as one for ASV. Cole Davies won the 250 class, and Yamaha rewarded him with a spread as well. And since Malcolm Stewart said, "A podium is a win for us right now," we'll include his Sidi ad for his third-place finish. The same goes for 250 runner-up Seth Hammaker, the only rider this season to have a 250 SX win that's NOT on a Yamaha.

The Camp Coker GNCC in South Carolina accounted for a lot of pages in this week's issue. FMF/KTM Factory Racing's Grant Davis took the win, Phoenix Racing Honda's Angus Riordan won XC2, and Danielle McDonald got another win in WXC. All three were running FMF exhausts.

Hey, Watch It!

Slumdog Millionaire for Motocross?! Thanks to Aaron West for spotting this masterpiece, which he and his wife Cristina will be attending the world premiere of, and it honestly looks very cool!

This is Lawrence: BIG ONE IN THE MAIN EVENT!! 2026 DETROIT SX

Shane McElrath: What Happened?! | Detroit SX

Head-Scratching Headline/s of the Week 

"The toughest new sport in Japan is street-racing office chairs"-- CNN

"Thieves Stole 12 TONS of Kit Kat Bars But The Real Question Is...Uhhhh...What Do They Do Now?" --Barstool Sports

"Strippers Spill Deployment Date" -- The Sun