It all comes down to this! One round left in the Monster Energy Supercross series and we’re in for a good one. Ken Roczen and Hunter Lawrence in a winner take all race for the 450SX title! Both guys deserve this, both have cool back stories that enable you to cheer for them and it might very well be the last shot for both of them to get a 450SX championship. It sucks that one of these two guys, both very good humans, is going to have a lifetime of regrets this Saturday night.
Let’s take a look at the season numbers courtesy of MX Reference and a few other pertinent numbers from Denver, yeah?
1 Point
Well, I don’t need Nick at MX Reference to give me the point difference between Roczen and Lawrence right? Hunter’s win in Denver was his fifth of the year, tying Roczen for the season lead. He was .5 better on his best lap than anyone else and a real tour de force, clutch ride for the HRC rider.
60/40
Those are my own odds for how I feel this weekend will go with Lawrence in the 60% zone. I just think we’ll have similar conditions as Denver in SLC, traction will be a premium, the track will basically be the same, HRC bikes are good on this stuff, Lawrence has been a bit better starter than Roczen in the dry stuff and, shrugs, I think #96 will get it done with #94 trailing behind.
2
Like I said, Lawrence is better on starts than Kenny to the tune that at the holeshot line, he’s averaged almost two spots better than the Suzuki rider.
9
Podiums for Eli Tomac this season as his Denver one was his first since Birmingham, five rounds ago (he missed two rounds with injury). One would think ET might be worse than he had been seeing as he had been struggling a bit, then a crash hurt his hip and elbow but oh no, powered by his hometown-ish fans, Tomac ran a strong race to get third. So, add this to the “IDK Man” category.
7
That’s the number of riders that Justin Cooper passed in the main event. Might’ve been more but he got stuck behind his teammate Cooper Webb for a long time and then collided with Dylan Ferrandis and they both went down. J-Coop was not stoked with Webb after the main event with team manager Rich Simmons telling us he sat in is gear for 30 minutes after his 13th (which could’ve been a podium if everything had broken right).
4th
Remember that position for Haiden Deegan way back at Anaheim 1? A lot of “us” people thought that Haiden needed to dominate SX to really take that next step up. Well, he hasn’t lost since then! He won Birmingham, I don’t care what the results say and apparently, neither does Haiden as he made a comment about winning them all. I was at the Pro Circuit truck talking to Mitch Payton and Cameron McAdoo and I found myself telling them how damn fast Deegs was going in qualifying. I just had to tell someone how impressive he was and then I realized that neither of them seemed thrilled with my “Observations.” Maybe don't tell Pro Circuit people that a guy on another team is great!? Hmm. Anyways, Deegan won Denver rather easily to no one’s surprise. He’ll probably win Salt Lake City also BTW.
87
Deegan has led an astounding 87 more laps in nine races than the next guy in the class (Levi Kitchen). No further comment.
5
That’s the position for Kayden Minear in his first ever 250SX pro race. Pretty impressive for sure and that’s after having to go to the LCQ because he got sent off the track by Levi Kitchen right before the finish and then was docked…a lap? Like, this is a real penalty in the AMA rulebook, and it only applies to the last lap. Like, I get it, you probably need to go across the line, but what was Minear supposed to do and why is the penalty for this so harsh? More things that make you shake your head.
-59
That’s Jorge Prado positions lost this season, by far the highest of any rider in the top 20. In Denver we saw that our guy Jorge affected a lot of people’s races. Eli Tomac thought he might’ve been able to get to Roczen, but it took too long to get by his teammate and then of course we saw the Cooper Webb/Justin Cooper/Dylan Ferrandis battle behind the #26. Hey man, Prado’s good at this knowing exactly where you want to go at all times.
6
But also, Prado’s 6 holeshots on the year tie him with Lawrence for the lead in the class so everyone that’s mad they can’t get around him, better get used to it.
2
Number of first turn crashes for the returning-from-injury Cameron McAdoo. Which kind of sucks, the one in the heat broke his clutch off so he had to figure that out. Not a great night for Cam but hey, he’s back racing!
1st
The gear that Christian Craig was stuck in after an early race collision with Garrett Marchbanks. So, yeah, racing a 450 around in first gear had to be real fun. Hitting the whoops also would be super sweet. Too bad for CC, he was on it in the heat, he was “WSX” Craig looking for the first time all year. He was stoked about how he felt all day until the collision.
1
That’s also the position Chase Sexton qualified after the first session was done. I think it’s the first time he’s been #1 in the 450SX group since, I don’t know, San Diego? Anaheim 2? It’s been a long time and provided some hope for Sexton and Kawasaki. They worked with Twisted Development the week before the race to get some ECU tuning done, Sexton told me they got a start map, but then Chase’s starts were pretty much garbage in the two “fake” starts and the main event. The heat was good though! Sexton’s fifth was pretty fortunate and seeing him after the main event, all I could think of was the great Phil Nicoletti’s comment “That ain’t it.” Back to the drawing board I suspect.
Thanks for reading OBS, we’re onto what will be a pretty epic SLC SX this weekend methinks. Email me at matthes@racerxonline.com if you want to chat about this race or anything else.
