Jett: “We’ll take it, but I am not gonna say, ‘I won that one.’ Kinda got gifted”

In the second moto it was almost the reverse of the first. Hunter Lawrence grabbed the holeshot, and Jett was in third with Haiden Deegan in between them. It took Jett a few laps to make his way around Deegan, and then he closed up to the rear of Hunter. There the brothers raced, less than two seconds apart until about five minutes to go when Hunter hit neutral and went over the bars. Unfortunately for Hunter, not only did Jett get around him, but Haiden Deegan and Jorge Prado did as well, setting him back to fourth.

"The second one I was kind of pacing myself, I had not too bad of a flow but obviously was just kind of saving it for the end if I needed it," said Jett. "But poor HJ went down in that one with a bit of a weird crash. Obviously sucks for him and you don’t want to see someone crash and you get gifted a race win, but we ain’t gonna be too picky and complain about it. We’ll take it but I am not gonna say, ‘I won that one’ kinda got gifted.”

Jett’s 2-1 beat out Hunters 1-4, not only for the overall, but propelled him back in the championship lead, by only one point. This is the second time in six rounds that Jett has taken over the red plate from Hunter. At this rate, with the brothers so evenly matched, the question is who will have the red plate come Ironman? A situation that would be stressful for a rider if the competition was anyone but his own brother.

“It's tough, but it's fun. I think it's what’s keeping me going with my foot a little more. I don’t know, I like it, I wouldn’t want to be battling with no one else but Hunter. I think it's cool. I expected us to go what we have done so far. I know my game and where we’re at, I know where he’s at and it's, I feel, at the top of our sport right now. So, I figured a little bit where we’d be, because we’re good at starts and stuff like that, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. Battling with your brother for a championship, it's really, really cool because not a lot of people get to do it.”

This battle may be a little bitter-sweet for Jett though, as he is still not 100 percent with his foot/ankle injury. A topic he is getting a little tired of, as he said when asked about his modified footpeg.

“I think it definitely helped a little bit for my foot, it just kind of saved it for sure. I was able to use my legs a little bit more. But also, my foots still the same. I think I am getting sick of my foot questions. Because for me it hasn’t changed at all and I am still saying the same things.”

Luckily team manager for Honda HRC Progressive, Lars Lindstrom was in the press conference and expanded on the modified footpeg on Jett’s bike.

“Basically, we’ve had kind of ideas like this, but it hasn’t been something that’s worked out or that we thought was going to be a big thing. Then this week, Darren and Jett down in Florida, had the idea of trying something like that. They were able to try a version, but it wasn’t really what he wanted, he wanted something a bit more flat, a bigger platform so he could rest his heal. And I think when he’s riding and he’s trying to ride on the balls of his feet like he wants to do, at some point he just can’t do that anymore with the way that his foot is right now. So, he rests his heal on the foot peg and that puts his foot way forward. So, he’s trying to do kind of both. But not put yourself in a vulnerable position where you can get your foot torn off in the ruts and stuff like that. So, they were like, ‘We want to run something like this.’ And that was Wednesday night. So, we kind of came up with a plan on how we could do it. We don’t like to do it that way, we want it well thought out, we want to execute it the right way but we kind of had to do something.”

“Luckily, we have really good guys in the shop. I want to give a shout out to Ezra Ebberts in the shop, our team engineer, fabricator. And then Don Pastel, who actually works in the auto division, but he’s kind of like special projects and he does all kinds of cool stuff. Really good knowledge, great fabricator. He came over to help us out, so we built two different versions, and it was a big help for Jett today. I told Darren a few minutes ago, I thought this would be a place where he would really struggle because you really have to work the bike and be on the balls of your feet, and the tracks so rough. So, for him to do what he did today, I think it was worth it and I am really proud of the guys for making it happen. And changing a flight, getting here and trying it out. Luckily, we did put it on the CAD program to make sure the strength was going to be there, so we were fairly confident that it was going to be fine. But we never like to come to a race with something we haven’t tested yet.”

Lars is in the peculiar position of having two of riders battling each other for a championship. But the brothers have done an excellent job so far of not letting the battle get in the way of their relationship. And now with the modified peg, Jett was able to close the gap Hunter had on him at the last two rounds. But before we start thinking Ironman and championship, who will hold the advantage next weekend at Spring Creek?