Three races at Atlanta Motor Speedway might have summed up all of 2021

WORDS: JASON WEIGANDT
PHOTOS: ALIGN MEDIA

All seemed right when Eli Tomac flashed across the line with victory at the first supercross held at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Thanks to his Daytona record (five wins in the last six years), Tomac is considered a speedway-style rider. Hey, this is still Eli Tomac! Wins should never seem shocking, and that’s why the 2020 champ began the 2021 season as the odds-on favorite. Atlanta 1 represented that sense of normalcy—Tomac as #1, even though a crash by Aaron Plessinger and a blunder in lapped traffic by Chase Sexton helped his cause.

Consider that the preseason. Young kids will step up, but Tomac could still outlast them. Then consider Ken Roczen’s dominant win at Atlanta 2 as the midseason. Ken rode so smooth and efficient that no one could stop him.

Then, Atlanta 3 is the close. While it once again looked like this would be the race and the year where Roczen would pull it off, that gritty, determined Cooper Webb flipped the script. Tomac at the beginning, Roczen in the middle, Webb at the end. That’s how it went in Atlanta. That’s how it went in 2021.