Howdy y'all and welcome back to MotoSport.com Gear Head weekly observations! This shock exploding, throttle stuck wide open Gear Head Ryan Roberts back at it with all the takes from Round 14 of Monster Energy AMA Supercross from Nashville, Tennessee!
What a crazy round that was! The 450 points race isn't even top 3 topics coming out of this race. The fact that Ken Roczen's shock blew up is probably the top topic of the weekend. That was the wildest thing I have ever seen in all the multi decades I have been watching supercross. From what I read, I believe he will be okay and hopefully not miss any of the closing rounds of the championship, because he was on fire in the opening laps of this race. I am completely guessing here, but I think it was the triple that him and the other couple of leaders was doing out of the turn before the whoops was just more than the shock could handle. There are pictures that have come out today, showing the C clip that keeps the shock together coming off, and guessing the landing from the impact is what caused it to come off. That is completely speculative but maybe it makes sense.
Chase Sexton also had a rough night when a rock hit his throttle body and caused him to go about 1.9 jumps instead of 2 when his throttle got stuck wide open. That is also a very weird incident that I hadn't heard of before. I have heard of throttles malfunctioning and getting stuck wide open but not because of a rock hitting the throttle body before. Supposedly he is alright and will be competing again this weekend in Pittsburgh.
Another crazy thing that happened was both of the Pro Circuit Kawasaki riders that were leading their respective 250 series championships, took each other out on the first lap. Cameron McAdoo did not remount his bike and is probably done for the year, Levi Kitchen got back on his bike and made it back up to 14th in the race, salvaging his hopes at still winning this championship. Someone still needs to do some kind of exorcism at the PC Truck to try and rid whatever curse has been placed on that team. I feel really bad for Mitch Payton, the guy is a legend of the sport and has had some great riders over decades and has just had nothing but the struggle bus for years.
Those two crashing gave the championship leads to Tom Vialle and R.J. Hampshire. I think Tom is a lock for the East, but R.J. will have a motivated and determined Levi Kitchen looking for some redemption in two weeks.
That is it folks, round 14 of the AMA Monster energy Supercross series is done and dusted. This is your favorite Gear Head Ryan Roberts checking out and remember kids, if you need anything for any bike, dirt or street, ATV, UTV, just hit up any Gear Head at MotoSport.com and we will get you hooked up! We will see you next week at Pittsburgh Pennsylvania for round 15 of Monster Energy AMA Supercross. This will be the first time in this stadium, so we have no idea what we will get. There is also a chance for bad weather (let me know if you have heard that before) so that could make things very interesting.
