Monday Morning Coffee

Grab another cup for this week’s edition of Monday Morning Coffee where we discuss some of what happened in #Motocross over the weekend

By Billy Rainford

I hope everyone had a great weekend. With the price of gas right now, I decided the 11-hour drive down to Nashville was just asking a little too much, so I stayed home and watched the action from my living room couch. Fortunately, we had Al Strickert lurking around in the stands and pointing his iPhone in some great directions for us. Thanks for that, Al.

He even wandered over to the Jeremy McGrath Holeshot King on Friday night on Broadway Street downtown. Good stuff.

#96 Honda HRC rider Hunter Lawrence has now taken sole position on the points lead in the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship with his win in Nashville at Round 13 and the apparent struggles shown by his former co-points-leader #3 Red Bull KTM’s Eli Tomac.

I know there have been many other races where most thought it was a little crazy to run a scoop tire in the rear, but this one had, I think, everyone scratching their head. Sure, when the start straight is tilled up deep and getting the start is of utmost importance, most of us can wrap our heads around the decision, but this past Saturday in rock hard Nissan Stadium???

It obviously worked for Tomac early in the day as he set fastest lap time in qualifying, but the Main was a different story.

Eli said he rides the scoop on similar track conditions at his home in Colorado, and a guy with his credentials sort of makes you ready to believe him, but it still seemed like a wild choice for that track.

Here’s what Eli said in his latest Instagram post:

“It’s been a tough month of racing. Really thought yesterday was going to be a turnaround, had an awesome qualifying and heat race and then I’ll I did was make mistakes in the one that mattered. 👎”

Are we putting all the blame on the scoop tire? At this point, I think it’s a viable reason. For someone who famously has their bike maxed out for a hard hit of power, you’d think the rear tire would be a pretty important choice for you, and it obviously is. Eli must think he can ride it in any condition otherwise it’s pretty clear he has the resources to ride any tire he wants, so we’re all left scratching our heads on the sidelines.

He came right out and said he liked the condition of the track after taking top qualifying spot, so most thought it was likely going to be his night to shine and leave this “funk” in the rearview mirror, but it ended up being just the opposite.

Eli is now 15 points behind Hunter in the series with a dwindling amount of races left to play catch-up; 4 to be exact.

In the Main, #46 Justin Hill shocked the world and grabbed the holeshot ahead of #26 Jorge Prado, #94 Ken Roczen, #719 Vince Friese, and #96 Lawrence. Tomac was mired outside the top 10 and #17 Joey Savatgy and #27 Malcolm Stewart were down together on lap 2.

Roczen got by Hill and looked like he may be about take off, but Lawrence closed in and was making his charge to the front.

At the half, Roczen was still holding Lawrence off and Hill was still up in 3rd ahead of #1 Cooper Webb, who was on his way forward, and #32 Justin Cooper.

Just after this point, Roczen made a mistake and couldn’t hit a triple allowing Lawrence to double and take the lead. But no, Roczen passed him right back and regained the lead. However, it was very short-lived and Lawrence made the next pass stick and took over at the front.

Roczen would go down and drop back to 4th as Hill and Webb had a nice battle going for 2nd place.

Tomac lost his front end and dropped back to 11th after running 8th.

Webb got by Hill with 3:50 remaining and #14 Dylan Ferrandis was showing great pace and closed in on the Roczen group just ahead of him.

At the checkered flag it was Lawrence cruising to the win ahead of Webb, Roczen, #4 Chase Sexton, Ferrandis, and Hill who dropped to 6th.

Roczen has moved into 2nd spot and is now 10 points behind Hunter in the championship.

I’m on record as picking Hunter Lawrence as the series champion, but the way Ken has been riding makes it seem possible for him to continue to close the gap. Just like it’s always amazing to watch as the peloton closes in and overtakes the breakaway riders right at the end of a cycling race, maybe Ken is timing this perfectly. I guess we’ll see soon enough.

The results were still “provisional” on Saturday, but they have since been made official:

In the 250 class, things got a little wild except for #37 Cole Davies out front. #58 Daxton Bennick continues to impress and grabbed the holeshot ahead of #25 Nate Thrasher who is coming on strong late in the regional series. #35 Drew Adams was back in action just 4 weeks after breaking his thumb and was in 3rd ahead of Davies.

#180 Landen Gordon was entered in his first pro Supercross and looked great earlier in the day when he qualified up in 6th place. Unfortunately, he headed into the mechanics area early on to get work done on his front end. He ended up at the back of the pack after doing what he could. Here’s how he described what happened on his Instagram:

“Nashville pro debut ☑️ Had a good day going P6 in qualifying P3 in the heat race, hit someone’s foot peg in the first corner of the main and broke a bunch of spokes, had to go in for a new wheel. Not much I could do overall but learned a lot. Cleveland up next!“

With under 5 minutes left to go in the Main, Bennick was up in 2nd place behind Davies, who was pulling away out front, when he slid out by the mechanics area and when he slid back the other way #10 Seth Hammaker had nowhere to go and they came together and hit the ground.

This crash gave Davies a 17-second lead and he must have been wondering where everyone was! Thrasher took the vacant 2nd position and Hammaker managed to get up and salvage a 3rd.

Bennick got going too and had a ton of pressure on the last lap from, I’d say one of the best stories of the 250 East series, #53 Henry Miller to the flag in 5th.

Ahead of them in 5th was the other “best story” of the 250 East, #89 Devin Simonson with his best finish.

Nobody seems to have an aswer for the rookie Cole Davies in the East. Hammaker has the speed but isn’t showing the consistency needed to take him down. Only #1W Haiden Deegan seems to have an answer for him and we’ll see that again when we get to SLC and the final East/West Showdown of the season.

Next up is Cleveland, Ohio, which is a Triple Crown followed by Philadelphia which is an SMX Next round.

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MXGP of Sardegna

Did you get a chance to watch Round 4 of the MXGP World Championships in Sardegna, Italy? Spoiler alert: Lucas Coenen and Jeffrey Herlings put 45 seconds on the rest of the field in the 2nd 450 moto! It was wild. It was broadcast on CBS Sports Network on Sunday. Check out the results and the highlights:

MXGP – GP Classification Pos Nr Rider Nat. Fed. Bike Race 1 Race 2 Total 1 5 Coenen, Lucas BEL FMB KTM 25 25 50 2 84 Herlings, Jeffrey NED KNMV HON 22 22 44 3 74 de Wolf, Kay NED KNMV HUS 18 20 38 4 1 Febvre, Romain FRA FFM KAW 20 18 38 5 70 Fernandez, Ruben ESP RFME HON 16 16 32 6 303 Forato, Alberto ITA FMI FAN 13 14 27 7 16 Vialle, Tom FRA FFM HON 14 12 26 8 243 Gajser, Tim SLO AMZS YAM 12 13 25 9 959 Renaux, Maxime FRA FFM YAM 9 15 24 10 39 Van De Moosdijk, Roan NED KNMV KTM 8 10 18 11 80 Adamo, Andrea ITA FMI KTM 15 3 18 12 10 Vlaanderen, Calvin NED KNMV DUC 6 11 17 13 83 Oliver, Oriol ESP RFME KTM 10 6 16 14 41 Jonass, Pauls LAT LAMSF KAW 11 4 15 15 919 Watson, Ben GBR ACU TRI 7 7 14 16 32 Van doninck, Brent BEL FMB FAN 2 9 11 17 24 Horgmo, Kevin NOR NMF HON 1 8 9 18 101 Guadagnini, Mattia ITA FMI KTM 0 5 5 19 261 Talviku, Jorgen-Matthias EST EMF YAM 5 0 5 20 55 Spies, Maximilian GER DMSB KTM 3 1 4 21 93 Geerts, Jago BEL FMB BET 4 0 4 22 253 Pancar, Jan SLO AMZS KTM 0 2 2 23 811 Sterry, Adam GBR ACU KTM 0 0 0 24 132 Bonacorsi, Andrea ITA FMI DUC 0 0 0 25 91 Seewer, Jeremy SUI SWISSMOTO DUC 0 0 0 26 86 del Coco, Matteo ITA FMI HUS 0 0 0 27 4 Elzinga, Rick NED KNMV BET 0 0 0 28 9 Benistant, Thibault FRA FFM HON 0 0 0

MX2 – GP Classification Pos Nr Rider Nat. Fed. Bike Race 1 Race 2 Total 1 1 Längenfelder, Simon GER DMSB KTM 22 25 47 2 19 Coenen, Sacha BEL FMB KTM 25 22 47 3 26 Everts, Liam BEL FMB HUS 20 18 38 4 8 Mc Lellan, Camden RSA KNMV TRI 15 20 35 5 772 Reisulis, Janis Martins LAT LAMSF YAM 18 12 30 6 20 Mikula, Julius CZE ACCR KTM 16 13 29 7 33 Karssemakers, Kay NED KNMV KAW 13 14 27 8 47 Reisulis, Karlis Alberts LAT LAMSF YAM 10 16 26 9 99 Farres, Guillem ESP RFME TRI 14 11 25 10 408 Smulders, Scott NED KNMV HUS 9 10 19 11 83 Grau, Maxime FRA FFM HON 8 8 16 12 317 Valin, Mathis FRA FFM KAW 0 15 15 13 716 Zanocz, Noel HUN MAMS KTM 6 9 15 14 12 Gundersen, Pelle NOR NMF HUS 7 6 13 15 18 Lata, Valerio ITA FMI HON 11 1 12 16 172 Valk, Cas NED KNMV TM 12 0 12 17 420 Rossi, Andrea ITA FMI KTM 5 5 10 18 73 Zanchi, Ferruccio ITA FMI DUC 1 7 8 19 290 Voelker, Joshua GER DMSB KTM 4 4 8 20 401 Van Drunen, Lotte NED KNMV YAM 3 3 6 21 938 Bicalho, Rodolfo BRA FMI KTM 2 2 4 22 48 Walvoort, Jens NED KNMV KTM 0 0 0

Next round is also in Italy at the MXGP of Trentino, April 19th.

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Jess Pettis Podcast Interview

In case you didn’t check out the Frid’Eh Update this past week, it was #15 Jess Pettis‘ week for an interview and we had a good phone call chat for it:

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In our area, I’m seeing a forecast for the week that shows temperatures as high as 25 Celsius! However, it’s also showing about a 90% chance of rain every day. It’s usually either in the morning or in the evening, so I’m not ruling out the chance to get out on the YZ250 2-stroke or a bicycle of some sort.

Also, this coming weekend will be Round 1 of the AMO Ontario Championships at Gopher Dunes. It’s always great to see races at one of our Canadian Triple Crown Series MX Nationals tracks because it also usually means we’ll see a good number of our travelling pro riders at the event.

Here are some of the riders anticipated to be there: Preston Kilroy, Sebastien Racine, Tanner Ward, Quinn Amyotte, Dylan Wright, Dylan Rempel, Tanner Scott, Cole Pranger, Ayrton Pomeroy, Hayden Jamieson, Jameson MacDonald, and Travis Bryom, to name a few. Don’t look at the weather forecast, but I’ll see you there.

I wondered if newly-crowned Amsoil Snocross Champion and Red Bull KTM’s 250 rider for 2026 Crayden Dillon was going to make an appearance, so I got in touch with him. He sent back a photo of what he was doing at that very moment:

Crayden said he’ll be down south training for 3 weeks before headiing home to Ontario. Round 1 of the Triple Crown Series is June 7 at Wild Rose MX in downtown Calgary, Alberta.

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OK, I hope that helped you get through another cup to start your week. Busy weekend coming up with Round 14 of Supercross in Cleveland on Saturday afternoon followed by Round 1 of the AMO Championship at Gopher Dunes on Sunday.