| August 27, 2016
During his rookie campaign in the 2016 Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship, Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Austin Forkner has had a lot of success, including winning a moto outright at Washougal a few weeks back. The trouble he was having, even at events where he was successful, was putting two motos together, which isn’t an uncommon thing for rookies such as himself.
In the sloppy, muddy, and tricky conditions at the season finale Ironman MX National in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Austin Forkner managed to keep it together in both motos to take his first-ever AMA National win.
In the first 250MX moto, Forkner got out front early while his strongest competition suffered trouble in the early going. Austin Forkner led Troy Lee Designs/Red Bull KTM’s Mitch Oldenburg, Pro Circuit teammate Joey Savatgy, Yamalube/Star Racing Yamaha’s Alex Martin and the rest of the field in the early going. Last year’s event winner Aaron Plessinger rounded lap one at the tail end of the top 10, and newly crowned champion Cooper Webb was even farther back than that.
While Austin Forkner pulled away in the early going, Oldenburg gave way to Savatgy and Martin as the pair diced back and forth fighting for second place – a battle that Savatgy would eventually win – and Webb had two uncharacteristic crashes that limited his late-moto run to land in fifth place, while Plessinger, suffering similar issues, ended up eighth.
In moto two, Austin Forkner again got the start, but this time Plessinger was right there with him and took over the lead from the rookie immediately. Webb, Adam Cianciarulo, Martin, Arnaud Tonus and Savatgy gave chase behind them. Tonus went down late on the first lap and remounted 35th.
Before the end of lap two, Plessinger made a costly and uncharacteristic error in a rutted corner – where he usually excels – and nearly went down, which allowed Forkner to close back up on him and make a pass for the lead. Plessinger stayed as close as he could to the rookie from that point out, while they both managed to pull away from Webb. Around the halfway point, Webb crashed for his third time on the day, allowing teammate Martin to get onto his rear wheel, and not long after that, Forkner crashed out of the lead as well. Forkner took a long time to get up, and once he got going, Webb was all over his rear tire.
Webb passed Forkner with five laps to go, but he was over 10 seconds behind teammate Plessinger at the time and was forced to settle for second in the moto, while Forkner took the overall with a 1-3. All three Yamalube/Star Racing Yamaha teammates – Plessinger (8-1), Webb (5-2) and Martin (3-4) tied on points on the day with 38 apiece, which gave Plessinger second overall in the tiebreaker just in front of Webb, with Martin just off the podium.
For Austin Forkner, it was his first-ever overall win, which is the perfect ending to his rookie season.
Last week’s winner, Rockstar Energy Husqvarna’s Zach Osborne, suffered throughout the day in Indiana. He qualified 11th, but his bike wasn’t to staging on time, which caused him to lose the 11th gate pick for moto one. He still managed a decent start, but ran into trouble a few laps in, and could only muster 11th in the moto. Then, things got even worse in moto two, as his team was forced to change his clutch on the line, which caused Osborne to start after the entire field had already not only started the race, but was well into the opening lap. Osborne still managed 15th in the moto despite the trouble, and finished out the season 7th in the points standings.
Webb officially won the championship with 495 points over Alex Martin (422), Joey Savatgy (383), Austin Forkner (376), Aaron Plessinger (351), 2014-2015 champ Jeremy Martin (321, after missing the last three rounds), Zach Osborne, Adam Cianciarulo (266), Arnaud Tonus (243) and Mitchell Oldenburg (237).
Steve Cox