On Saturday, August 27, 1983, at Spring Creek MX Park in Millville, Minnesota, Team Honda rider Johnny O’Mara clinched the 1983 125cc National Motocross Championship after a fierce battle with rivals Jeff Ward, Mark Barnett and Ron Lechien. “A lot of people consider the ’83 season as one of the toughest ever,” offered O’Mara of the epic 125cc title fight. “Barnett was still in his prime and Jeff Ward and myself were peaking and Ron Lechien and a few other guys were coming on. It was quite fulfilling to win such a competitive series.”
Forty-three years removed from O’Mara’s championship season, the Californian will be out at Fox Raceway at Pala this Saturday for the opening round of the 2026 AMA Pro Motocross Championship. He's just as involved now as he was then, as the mentor and riding coach to both Hunter and Jett Lawrence. O’Mara's watchful eyes will be on the dynamic duo and their Honda HRC Progressive CRF450RWEs as the brother act makes a run at the 450MX championship. Jett, of course, won the title last year and also in 2023 when he won all 22 motos for a perfect season. As a rookie! This year, though, he enters off of the toughest injury of his career thus far. Is he ready for round one?
“Jett is ready to go,” said O’Mara of Jett Lawrence, who suffered a fractured talus, a fractured navicular, a dislocated ankle and a shattered tibia in a training crash last December. “Obviously he hasn’t been on the bike in a while. He’s been chomping at the bit to get back racing. It’s been an intense rehab program, but he’s ready to go for Saturday so everyone is excited to see it.
“He’s back from that injury,” continued O’Mara. “Everyone knows. It’s been talked about widely out there. It was a very severe break in that ankle area, but everything is sound in there right now. We’re not worried about anything. We’ve been on top of that thing since day one. That’s the best doctors and rehabilitation people in the business. Yeah, it’s good to go. Sure, you still may see him limp around a little. That just kind of comes with the territory of doing that (injury). I limp around on my foot from when I broke it so many years ago. I think we all know that an injury at that level, it’s probably always going to be never the same. It doesn’t mean you can’t do your job at the highest level. I’m just being pretty frank so people can understand that.”
So is everything where it needs to be for Jett Lawrence to be....basically still Jett Lawrence?
“Yeah, I do think Jett is good to go,” said O’Mara enthusiastically. “I was just in Florida the last couple weeks after the supercross stuff. I went back to make sure everything is in place with Hunter jumping on the outdoor stuff. Jett has been doing all testing and putting in all of the time that’s necessary with the motorcycle, so a lot of the Hunter stuff was already gone through with Jett. Everything looks good. There was plenty of seat time on Jett’s side."
Jett missing supercross and focusing solely on motocross testing will help older brother Hunter, who was mired in a Monster Energy Supercross Championship fight to the end.
"There was minimal time outdoors for Hunter, but only because he just came off the supercross season," says O'Mara. "Being able to go a full 17 race series in supercross, Hunter is pretty fit. There is no doubt about it. I’m not worried that he can’t go two 35-minute motos. I’ll put it that way. He’s highly fine-tuned. There was not too much wear and tear on him. We felt good the whole time. Kenny [Roczen] just was a little better at the last race, so we just move on. Congratulations to Kenny [Roczen] and we just wish we were in that spot, but there are going to be more opportunities for Hunter. That one hurt because we were so close.”
O’Mara explains that Hunter Lawerence has moved along from the disappointment he experienced from coming up so heartbreakingly close to Roczen at the finale.
“Yeah, Hunter is fine,” offered O’Mara. “Hunter is an intense individual. You just give him his space. Give him 24 hours and he just moves on. That’s literally how we look at it. I give him his space. He flew home right away. Not sulking, but it just hurts a little bit. When you want to win that bad, you expect that to hurt. If you didn’t see it hurt, then you’d be disappointed in the person, because they lay everything on the line. I’d be the same way. Some of the greatest people that I’ve worked with, champions, business people, people all over, if they don’t get their way, they’re not too happy. They move on, though. As they say, you fail way more than you succeed. Hunter has had plenty of that. Jett has had plenty of that when he was young. Jett is going through it a little bit now. He had a couple of injuries, but he comes back. Last year he won. I don’t see Jett missing any beats on this. I think he is going to be competitive right off the bat. I think we’ll see that this weekend.”
O’Mara, who competed for Team Honda from 1980 through 1986, firmly believes, also, in the Honda HRC Progressive race team. Using some of his old connections, he has tried to help the program from the inside, connecting Japan to the American team like it was in his previous era.
“It’s a good as you can imagine,” said O’Mara, who won the 1984 AMA Supercross Championship for Team Honda. “Everyone kind of knows my history with the Honda racing team back when we built it super-strong in the 1980s. That was a long time ago, but that’s how we tried to replicate it for Jett and Hunter. So, I was part of that and the Honda guys gave me full range to help with putting people in place. We’ve got Japan way more involved now. It’s built perfectly for both boys to succeed."
Now comes the opener at Fox Raceway at Pala in Southern California. How are they looking at it all?
“It’s just the start of another motocross series for us. We don’t really look at it any other way. You would think there are some big talks about it. There’s not. In our camp, you can only control what’s in front of us. That’s just being prepared. You guys all know how my work ethic is and how we go about business. That translates to the boys, and I’ve been around them long enough that we all kind of know what we’re doing. We don’t get wrapped up in anything other than making sure we are as prepared as possible when we go on the start line.”
Haiden Deegan. He’ll be at Fox Raceway at Pala on a Monster Energy Star Racing Yamaha YZ450F and he’s been lighting up the global moto media about it. How have O’Mara and the Lawrence brothers looked at the Deegan variable come this Saturday? Is this the rivalry to watch?
“We don’t fall in that category,” said O’Mara. “We’re not dumb. We watched the kid be successful on the small bike. We would expect him to come into the 450 ranks and be competitive right off the bat. Where that is we don’t know until we see the start of the season here relatively quick. Other than that, we just know we have a very stacked field. We don’t disrespect any of the guys in there because there plenty of guys that are grown men and championship material guys who have won multiple championships. We don’t really look at any particular guy, we just know how to prepare ourselves for a battle. That’s what we do. Twenty-two motos and then on to the SMX Finals. All the guys are very good. They’re World Champions and multi-time champions. We don’t look at it like, “He’s our main competition.” We don’t look at it like that. If anything, the boys are pretty competitive with themselves and it wouldn’t surprise me to see those guys at the front and competing for wins between the two of them.”
