2024 Anaheim 2 Supercross Photo Gallery

2024 Anaheim 2 Supercross Recap

A dry day, even a pleasant summer day, greeted fans and riders for Round 4 of the 2024 Monster Energy Supercross series as warm condition enveloped the Southland and Angel Stadium on Saturday in Anaheim, CA.

The first of three Triple Crown races for the year proved, for some at least, the necessity of the format though it does continue to divide fans. Riders seem to like it. Triple Crown races three Main Events calculating results based on Olympic style scoring and awards the round's winner to the racer with the least points totaled from their finish in all three races. It may or may not make for good racing but Saturday's results continued to inject near unprecedented excitement in the 60th anniversary of the sport.

Cooper Webb won without winning. The veteran who got knocked out of the Championship race last year in the third to last round after sustaining a season-ending concussion rode a rather quiet evening proving the effects of consistency. He finished the first two races in second, then fifth in Race 3 to wrap up the overall and his first victory since Round 7 last year at Arlington.

Webb fought off the effects of a gnarly cold / flu / COVID (they still test for that? It's all pretty much the same thing now) for the overall and said it felt unreal to win without winning. He looked OK post-race but needed a few bursts of hard coughing once his interview finished. He sits in third-place, six points out of first.

Much to the delight of a packed stadium, Eli Tomac, robbed of last year's Supercross Championship when his Achilles had other plans at the penultimate race, had a ho-hum night to start finishing fifth and seventh in the first two races but a fantastic gatedrop in Race 3 turned into beast mode as he quickly left the pack and rode to an easy win. Tomac said post-race he was glad to know he could still do it. So are we, Eli, so are we.

His initial scores had him in third-place overall with Jason Anderson in second, but Anderson crashed in the third race and cut too much of the track upon entering and was docked two spots which dropped him to fourth overall. That gave Aaron Plessinger, who got his first career 450 class win the week earlier, third overall and more importantly he keeps the Red Plate for another week. Reigning Champion Chase Sexton crashed while heading to the front on Race 2 ending in an 11th place finish. His first and second place results in Race 1 and 3, respectively had him on the cusp of the overall.

Jett Lawrence, who blitzed the field at Round 1 and was widely expected by some to go undefeated and be crowned the new King of Supercross, hasn't reached the podium since. The rookie hit the ground multiple times during the night, the most brutal coming in the final race with him apparently trying to rundown Tomac (for no other reason than to rundown Tomac). Lawrence crashed in the whoops on the last lap, looking a little like the intro to the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man in his dust-up, and a for-sure second-place finish and second-place overall dropped him to just fourth for the race but sixth overall.

By the way, nothing came from the incident between Anderson and Lawrence whose helmet grabbing brew ha ha in San Diego exploded the click rate of the Moto tabloids. Had either one parked the other at any time during any of the races surely Comcast, which owns NBC, trading shares would see a bump in price. It's down today.

Elsewhere, 3-time MXGP (Two MX2 class; 2023 MXGP) Champ Jorge Prado concluded his US tour with a 12th place overall. As he heads to Europe, Prado leaves the US series in 10th place in the Championship standings.

Of note, four rounds and four different winners so far and the Top 5 only separated by 10 points.

Same goes for the 250 West class at least in terms of four different winners.

A crazy night for them too as Levi Kitchen made it back-to-back Anaheim 2 Triple Crown race wins. The Washougal native went 1-2-3 for the overall easily besting RJ Hampshire who finished second-overall on a 2-1-7 night. Nath Thrasher, winner the week prior, finished 10th in Race 2, ruining an otherwise solid night with third in Race 1 and first in Race 3.

Kitchen gets the Red Plate for the first time in his career which he shares next week with Jordon Smith who fell off the podium for the first time this season and finished fifth overall. His rough night for Anaheim 2 was salvaged with a fifth-place overall but his 4-8-4 finished could have been a lot worse thanks to some crashes and opening lap hang-ups. He worked his way up from the back of the pack in the first two races. I coined the phrase "you win a Championship on your worst night" years ago. OK, I didn't say it, some other guy did.

Supercross helps lick the wounds of the Detroit Lions loss on Sunday in the NFC Championship game continuing their lifelong drought of reaching the Super Bowl. The Bad News Lions lost thanks in part to a decision to eschew two field goals and likely six points which ultimately resulted in two failed fourth down conversions.

A Supercross day race too at Ford Field and the 250 East class begins their season on Saturday.