This is the usual conundrum. Jett Lawrence dominates races in a different way, usually hovering his lead around the two-second mark and just holding it. He will only take as much risk or spend as much energy as needed, with the reserve to push a little harder if an attack comes. So when someone gets close, it’s hard to know if this is a true challenge or not. At Fox Raceway on Saturday, it looked like a real attack, first with his brother Hunter nearly pulling up side-by-side, and then Chase Sexton pushing hard in the second half of the race to apply pressure. Roger De Coster, the Motorsports Director for Sexton’s Red Bull KTM outfit, told me that he thought Sexton rode better than anyone on Saturday, even if he didn’t get the win. Numbers show that Sexton had the fastest lap of that moto and his final lap was nearly as fast as Jett’s best lap at any point.
So how strong was this challenge? Well, Jett’s 1-1 says the answer is simply “not strong enough” but even Sexton himself didn’t boast. He said he needs to find more pace, because each time he got close, Jett was able to keep him at bay.
“My start wasn’t good in the first moto but I made it work and I was probably fifth or sixth,” Sexton said. “Then I went to the outside going up the hill and I think Dylan [Ferrandis] made a mistake and came to a stop and I and tagged his back wheel and went down. So it wasn’t a great start and I came back pretty good, and then I fell again! [Laughs] I felt pretty good at the end of the moto and then, second moto, Hunter came out of the gate like a cannon [Laughs] and I was right next to him, so I kind of followed him around the first turn. Then Phil [Nicoletti] actually came out of nowhere, and passed me and him [Hunter]. So it was pretty chaotic. We actually had a good pace going. I passed Hunter in the switchback right here, and I think the pace went up a little bit. Yeah I went off the track. I tried my best. When I came up to him [Jett] he would answer. I’ve just got to get better at finding more pace.”
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