Good day, and welcome to another edition of the Yamaha Motor Canada Monday Gate Drop. For 2021, Yamaha has released and newly refined YZ250F and so far these news bikes have been having a lot of success in the 2021 Monster Energy Supercross Series. In the hotly contested 250SX East class, Monster Energy Star Racing Yamaha riders Christian Craig and Colt Nichols both have one win each thus far and will share the red plates as the series moves to Indianapolis next weekend for Round 4. If you want to become a valuable member of the Blu Cru then all you have to do is head out to your local Yamaha dealer and check out the new 2021 YZ line-up.
Well, isn’t this 2021 SX series off to an exciting start. Three different winners so far in both the 250SX East class as well as the 450SX class. Like me, I’m sure many of you predicted multiple winners during the first three rounds, but I’m not sure anyone saw this type of disparity coming this year. So far in the 450SX class, we’ve seen Barcia, Tomac, and Webb take the main event wins in 2021. Fans and media alike couldn’t have asked for a better start to 2021 and considering top riders like Roczen, Osborne, Cianciarulo, Musquin, and Anderson haven’t won yet, we could end up opening up this season with six or seven main event winners. We have also seen different riders taking up spots on the podium so far and that is very unusual. Even though the Top 3 riders in the 250SX East class (Craig, Nichols, Lawrence) have remained consistent, the 450SX class is wide open and will be for some time.
I thought the track was a little better at Round 3 than in the previous two rounds. As expected it was more technical and it kept the riders on their toes. I know people were making a big deal out of the right hand first turn, but in the end, it didn’t appear to cause too many issues. With a shorter than normal start straight the riders weren’t entering the first turn with an abundance of speed. Because of the slower than normal first turn entrance speed, the riders were able to remain in control. As I said, the rest of the track was technical and although it didn’t give the riders a ton of passing opportunities, it was still fun to watch them navigate the more challenging sections during the main events. In the end, the winners in both classes weren’t necessarily the faster riders, but they definitely were the smartest. After more than a week in Houston, the series now moves north to Indianapolis where the weather most certainly won’t be a nice as it was in Texas.
Now onto the Dean Wilson/Ken Roczen incident as how can you talk about Round 3 without addressing it. Whenever controversial things like this happen I always try and put myself in the shoes of the riders involved. I’d like to think that all riders do this and regardless of whether you’re a Dean Wilson fan or a Ken Roczen fan, I feel like every rider out there has been held up by a lapper at some point and knows the frustration that Roczen felt on Saturday night. But before I give you my opinion of this particular incident, let me tell you that getting lapped in a Monster Energy Supercross main event is challenging for all of the riders involved. If you were in Roczen’s position and you’ve led almost every lap of the main event with a tenacious rider like Cooper Webb on your rear tire, lapping any rider in the late stages can be stressful. Roczen not only had to worry about Webb behind him but with each lapped rider, he had to anticipate where they were going to go and then adjust his lines accordingly. When you’re leading the race the way Roczen was it’s a fine line between being overly aggressive with the lapped riders and being too cautious. As much as the referee at the riders meeting tells everyone that lapped riders should hold their lines and the faster riders will find a way by, all of us know that when you’re in the position that Roczen was in, you want every lapped rider to move completely out of the way without any hesitation.
Now, if you’re in Dean Wilson’s position and you’re in the late stages of the main event and you think that you’re still in a heated battle for 11th, then you’re so focused on not making any mistakes that you might not see the blue flags waving at you. Wilson not only issued an apology moments after the main event, but he also mentioned in a post-race interview that he thought it was Dylan Ferrandis behind him and he had to hold him off in the closing laps. This seems like a logical explanation as it’s easy to mistake who is behind you and where the leaders are. Obviously, Dean was so focused ahead that he not only didn’t see the blue flags, or his mechanic’s pit board as I would assume that it told him he had multiple seconds on 12th place. Also, I rewatched the main event on YouTube that was filmed by some random guy who was sitting in the stands and it clearly shows the leaders on their final lap. During that final lap with Roczen right on Wilson, Deano had a total of five blue flags waved at him. Well, let’s say four as one of them was in the middle of the whoop section. To me, this is a horrible spot to have an official with a blue flag as no rider has the time to take their eyes off of the track in that type of section. Anyway, if you discount that one, Wilson had four blue flags waved at him on the final lap. However, for half of that final lap, Deano was also lapping Kyle Chisholm himself, so perhaps he thought that the blue flags were being waved at Chisholm? Either way, you can see why Deano felt so terrible after the race when he realized what had happened.
No one wants to be the rider that affects the outcome of a race like that, but Wilson quickly owned up to his mistake and you have to respect him for that. In the end, I don’t think it was intentional on Wilson’s part, he’s not that type of rider, it was just a bad situation that unfolded before everyone’s eyes. Moving forward I hope that the officials go over both the placement of where the blue flags are on the track, as well as how they’re being used. As one of our own National Series officials Daryl Murphy pointed out yesterday in a comment on Facebook, if a blue flag is being waved vigorously, this will indicate to the rider getting lapped that they must move over. I don’t know, I guess there isn’t a set solution for this type of situation, but it’s something worth addressing. No one wants to see this happen again!
As the riders took to the track in Houston for Round 3, Jess Pettis officially announced on Social Media that he will be having surgery asap to repair his knee. This is the news we all feared as this cements the fact that Pettis will not be returning to the 250SX East Series in 2021. In fact, with the length of time that it takes to fully recover from this type of surgery, being 100% for the opening round of the MXTour Series is going to be a challenge. But this is Jess Pettis we’re talking about and I think it can be assumed that he’s going to do everything possible to be ready for his rookie season in the 450MX class. I’ve also said multiple times that with Pettis being still young his best days are still well ahead of him. Getting his knee fixed properly is a good decision and if he has to delay his start to the 2021 MXTour, or even take the summer completely off and focus on 2022, then that isn’t the worst idea. The important thing is that Pettis gets healthy and can come back strong. Good luck to Jess with his upcoming surgery and we’ll look forward to following his recovery in the coming months.
In other Canadian news, Casey Keast is now down in California training for some upcoming rounds of Monster Energy Supercross. Casey told me via text message that he’s planning on racing multiple rounds of the 250SX West Series in Atlanta and Dallas. This is great news as not only is Keast a great SX rider, but it will also give us Canadian fans someone to cheer for. With some good training in the coming weeks, I think Keast has a chance to make a few main events in the 250SX West Series. It’s going to be tough as this class appears to be fairly stacked with fast riders. But I feel like while the Top 10 is going to be very fast, after that there will be room for riders like Keast to shine.
Well, that is it for me this week. We’re still waiting on the 2021 MXTour Schedule to be released soon. I’m hearing that it will be all done soon and that the series will look a lot like the one last year, with a few additions. I’m also hearing that it could kick-off on the Canada Day long weekend with a Friday- Sunday doubleheader at Walton Raceway. If this happens that the series would start and end at Walton Raceway in August. Hopefully, the schedule comes out soon as I know everyone is waiting for it. In closing, all of us at MXP Magazine would like to send our deepest condolences to the Bell Family in California. Former Supercross Champion Mike Bell passed away of a heart attack over the weekend while he was out on a mountain bike ride. Mike was well-liked and very well respected in the industry and he’ll be missed by all. Thank you for reading and have a great week!