The seesaw 450 title battle in Monster Energy AMA Supercross titled again this weekend! Momentum absolutely will not stick! Ken Roczen had the big ‘mo a few weeks ago after back-to-back wins, but Hunter Lawrence grabbed it back last weekend in Nashville. In Cleveland, Lawrence then took off with an easy win in the first leg of the Triple Crown, and it looked like he was setting himself up for more championship success. Nope! As the rain came, Hunter’s starts left.
From there? In race two Hunter picked his way through and ended up fifth. In the final race he crashed several times, as chaos ensued. Here’s how Honda described it in a statement:
As he started to make his way forward, an early-race incident in the whoops saw him drop to 14th. After remounting, Lawrence noticed his fuel-tank vent hose had been dislodged in the fall, but he remained composed and pushed forward, climbing back to 11th. His progress was halted by a second incident (this one with another rider), and he ultimately crossed the line in 14th, securing sixth on the night.
Starts have been a huge strongpoint for the Lawrence brothers on their Honda HRC Progressive bikes, but a few times they have struggled to get traction over the starting gate if things are wet.
“For this Triple Crown, we had a lot of weather coming in,” said Lawrence. “The day started out really good, as I was P1 in qualifying. In the first race, I had a good start and checked out. In races 2 and 3, I just didn’t get the best starts, just couldn’t get the traction I needed, and made it tough on myself. When you don’t get a good start, you get put in not the best situations, and the last race kind of all came undone. I had a crash in the rutted whoop section, and then another rider hit my front wheel.”
“We’ll make sure that we do our due diligence to improve our starts in wet weather, especially since it’s possible that the last three rounds could be mud races,” said Team Manager Lars Lindstrom.
Lawrence is now up just one point on Roczen. The margins are super thin, which magnifies the importance of everything, including the weather.
| Position | Rider | Hometown | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Ken Roczen | Mattstedt, Germany  | 349 |
| 2 |  Hunter Lawrence | Landsborough, Australia  | 346 |
| 3 |  Cooper Webb | Newport, NC  | 315 |
| 4 |  Eli Tomac | Cortez, CO | 275 |
| 5 |  Justin Cooper | Cold Spring Harbor, NY | 273 |
“The radar during the afternoon showed that we could possibly miss it completely, but the tail end of the rain cell was heavier than expected,” said Lindstrom. “Although the rain and conditions could’ve been much worse, the track was still very slippery and tricky. We didn’t execute the starts that we needed in the final two races, and that put us in positions that are tough to make it back from, and also where you have to push harder than you want to in order to catch up.”
At least Lawrence likely won’t panic, as Lindstrom constantly praises the stay-even mentality of his rider. Can he maintain that even as the pressure grows higher? Hunter's already found a silver lining to the dark clouds in Cleveland. By adding three scores together, Triple Crowns help negate the damage of one bad result. Thus, Hunter still getting sixth overall with a 14th-place final race result could be key to the math.
“We salvaged only losing nine points, which feels better than what I thought it was going to be, for how bad the last one was,” said Lawrence. “On to Philadelphia now.”
