| March 1, 2023
Cycle News Guest Column
Wake-Up Calls and What We Now Know
By James Adams
Ricky Carmichael always says, “This championship begins at Daytona.” To the GOAT’s point, here we are on the eve of Daytona and the top-three 450SX riders are separated by only five points. While the first seven rounds hardly yielded any advantage on the scoreboard, they did deliver several wake-up calls to the top contenders of the 2023 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship. Here’s a look at the wake-up calls and what we now know prior to the “beginning” of the championship.
For defending champion Eli Tomac, his wake-up call is Chase Sexton’s sheer speed. It would appear Chase has Eli covered in that department—Sexton’s only challenge is to keep it together. Because the only one who can beat Chase Sexton is Chase Sexton, and, unfortunately, he is losing (winning?). Perhaps Eli knows this, and is relying on the fact that his own speed is the absolute limit before you will inevitably crash. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time. But Eli’s championship lead is on the edge of a knife at this point. Relying on mistakes from Sexton is no longer a viable plan.
After crashing out of the lead two main events in a row due to unforced errors (Tampa and Oakland), that has to be a wake-up call for Chase. Being ejected and dejected at Oakland might have been the final straw for the young Honda HRC rider. I don’t know that you get more of a wake-up call than throwing away the lead by crashing into the “Leader” sign. It nearly happened again in the third race at Arlington, only this time Eli was kind enough to answer back with a highly uncharacteristic mistake of his own, handing the lead back to Sexton.
As goes the struggle for all talent shining as brightly as Sexton, will he, can he, dial it down just enough to iron it out? Will he still be faster if he backs it down? Will he master the balance before he is plagued with injuries? If the answer to any of those is yes, then Eli will have a problem.
“I don’t know that you get more of a wake-up call than throwing away the lead by crashing into the ‘Leader’ sign.”
Even with Eli’s error in Arlington, things didn’t totally break Sexton’s way at round seven, which brings us to wake-up call number three: Cooper Webb. Anyone who was expecting to see a two-way battle for the championship this season, including Tomac and Sexton, better think again. A victory in Tampa effectively woke the tiny sleeping giant, and now that the two-time champion has race wins under his belt and the monkey off his back, he is coming on strong. God forbid he gets you in his sights late in the race. If you fall into the factory KTM’s crosshairs in the final laps, you’re done. Fortunately for Tomac, Webb simply ran out of time in Oakland, but that shark was coming fast, and he smelled blood when Eli momentarily ran off the track. It was Sexton’s turn to fall victim to Webb’s late-race attack in Arlington. The final laps of the third race determined the overall winner on the night, and you could argue it was due to a lapper being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Cooper had the leader in his sights on the final stretch—lapper or none, Sexton was as good as done.
Could the three-way championship battle turn into a four-way fight? Well, perhaps it could have if Jason Anderson had his wake-up call a few rounds earlier: Quit messing with Justin Barcia and just race. Now that he’s on probation for his puzzling and pointless tangle with Barcia in Tampa, the 2018 champ seems to have set aside his beef, and his lap times are finally being reflected in his results. With a triple-crown race win in Arlington, Ando now has the taste of victory back in his mouth. At 30 points down in the championship, it seems unlikely that he will vault himself back into the mix, but anything can happen with 10 rounds still to play for. Either way, the top-three will probably have to worry about a four-way battle for valuable race wins going forward.
As for the 250SX ranks, there aren’t as many wake-up calls, but we know this much is true.
The entertainment factor in the East is undeniably better—look no further than the Tampa 250SX main event to see the Hunter Lawrence show. Unlike his brother, Hunter keeps us watching by getting out to a lackluster start and clawing and fighting his way through the pack. The Tampa thriller was a race Hunter will likely never forget, and neither will Nate Thrasher as the duo knocked each other around in the last laps before crossing the line in a photo finish. It’s exactly what we come to see—an aggressive down-to-the-wire fight, of course, stopping just short of dirty.
“It’s all fair game,” James Stewart said of the Tampa 250 main. “If Grandma’s out there for race wins, she’s gonna get knocked down.” No one got knocked down, but the battle is just warming up.
In Arlington, Hunter was up against the full might of Yamaha—not only the factory Star team, but Muc-Off, as well. Watching Hunter get sandwiched in the second race between Haiden Deegan and Thrasher, or watching him clamor for the holeshot in the third race before getting devoured by a wave of blue bikes that left him buried under a pile of Hondas, you couldn’t help but root for him. You also couldn’t help but root for Thrasher after watching him get snake-bit in Tampa. He had to fight and claw his way through the triple crown even harder, and finally got his win, ironically with no race wins on the night (his 2-2-3 finishes were enough to secure the overall). Hunter might be dominating the leaderboard nearly as much as his brother, Jett, in the 250SX West championship, but at least the action in the East is delivering the wheel-to-wheel brawls we love to see.
There’s still much to unfold in the 250SX ranks, such as MXGP star Tom Vialle. The Frenchman is still finding his way in his rookie Supercross season, getting his feet wet and so far staying out of trouble. Perhaps that’s literally his only job right now, ahead of the Pro Motocross Championship. While it’s hard to count out the French when it comes to adapting to Supercross, the reigning 250MX World Champion will no doubt shine in the outdoors. As long as he arrives at Fox Raceway healthy.
Along with marking “the beginning” of the championship, Daytona Supercross also the first flash of what the outdoors will bring, which makes it even more exciting. Even more so now that we know Tomac plans to defend his title. Will Tomac reassert his dominance in Daytona? Will Vialle shine in the first outdoor-style track of the year? Will we have another Thrasher/Lawrence battle royale? We’re already seven rounds in, yet barely getting started in the 2023 season. One more thing we now know, it’s a good time to be a fan.CN