Welcome to Gearhead Operations weekly observations! This is your favorite Gearhead Ryan Roberts back at it again with hot takes from Supercross round 12 at Glendale Arizona!
As many of you are now aware of, last weekend was an off weekend for Monster Energy Supercross, brought to you by Monster Energy, a proud sponsor of Monster Energy Supermotocross. I hope you were able to reunite with those people that we call "family" on that off weekend, or you went out riding to get over the no Supercross fever.
After writing a few of these I have come to really understand how much the track is really the star of our sport. I didn't want to write another observation just stating that the track was this or that, but the track really is a huge chunk of our sport. I would estimate that the track is 49% and the riders are 51% of the stardom in our sport.
Once again, the track was at the center of attention for our sport this weekend. The layout looked awesome, and I imagine would be a very fun track to ride, but in the end, it did not lend to good racing. The track was very fast, and I did not notice any real options for different rhythms, or the riders just weren't doing different rhythm options. This was a Triple Crown race and the shorter races with the fast layout and not a lot of passing options, lead to essentially three lap races and then not many passes after three laps.
In other automotive racing sports, the tracks themselves are the same every year, and in our sport the facility will stay the same, but the track is different every year. In NASCAR you go to the same location and the track is the same year after year. Maybe one year they will put new asphalt down, but the layout is the same. For Supercross, the track designers must make 17 new tracks a year and that is something I do not think any other sport has to contend with.
Jett Lawrence won his first Triple Crown overall so that gets what is essentially the only monkey on his back off and he will most likely just settle in and ride to the series championship in a few more rounds. Levi Kitchen had a good showing and somewhat stayed up with Jett and beat him in one of the motos, giving Jett his only real challenge on the night. It will be interesting to see how Levi continues in these next few rounds where he really doesn't have a lot of pressure. This will be most likely be the last time he is on a Star bike with not much pressure, as I see that team leaning on him to win a title on one of the coast next year, presumably whichever coast Hunter Lawrence does not complete in.
The 450 class was the "Eli Tomac Show" and the battle between the two red plate holders, Cooper Webb and Eli Tomac, never really showed itself. Webb never had the starts to get ahead of Tomac and that was all Tomac needed on this track to fend him off. Chase Sexton won the middle moto and that was the only real inkling of doubt that one could surmise that the end result was in question.
One bit of news that came out of the third Triple Crown race was that Chase Sexton actually won the championship for the Triple Crowns, and myself and probably everyone in the entire sport did not realize this was actually a thing. When they handed him the trophy on the podium for having the best results of the three Triple Crowns, Chase looked shocked as well. I do not know why we need such a thing, but I guess it is a thing.
Next weekend is back east for a day race in Atlanta and back to the 250 East riders. With Tomac now 7 points up on Webb, can Webb get back some of those points and get back in it? We shall see!
