“I’m looking forward to reevaluating after this weekend," said Hunter Lawrence after Washougal.
The two-week break in the AMA Pro Motocross Championship couldn't come at a better time for the Honda HRC man, who is now struggling to maintain pace in 30 minute motos. Recent data has shown a big drop in speed for Hunter just past the halfway mark of the races, and that was noticeable at Spring Creek, where he straight-up admitted he was too fatigued to fight off Chase Sexton late in the day. Washougal was worse, his first race this season where he was not on the 450MX podium.
"I’ve kind of been struggling since RedBud—it just seems like I haven’t been the same since that crash," Hunter said. "So we’ll go back to the drawing board and figure a few things out about myself. It’s been two weekends in a row that I haven’t even had one good moto in me, which is extremely uncharacteristic. We’ll take this break to make sure we’re 100 percent healthy, so we can come out swinging for the last three rounds.”
Just three races ago, when Jett Lawrence exited AMA Pro Motocross with a thumb injury, Hunter Lawrence sat as the 450MX points leader and had also split motos with Sexton, each having beaten each other five times in 10 motos. Without Jett, Chase and Hunter were likely facing a one-on-one championship battle. In the first moto of that new scenario, at RedBud Hunter got out front and led. He was under pressure from Sexton, but kept fighting back to maintain the lead. He made it to lap 14 of a 16 lap race still holding on. Sexton admitted Hunter would have been tough to pass, especially with RedBud not offering many passing opportunities.
Then, Hunter went down hard on a downhill. Not only did it allow Sexton to take off with the lead and the moto win, it effectively and completely changed the momentum of the series. Sexton is now unbeaten, while Hunter has had trouble staying strong to the end of the races. These two things are not unrelated. The tougher the motos are for Hunter, the easier they are for Chase.
"Just struggle bus, man," said Hunter to us regarding his Washougal performance, where he went 5-4 for fourth overall.
Honesty has not been a problem for Hunter. He straight-up admitted he was too tired to hold Sexton back last week at Spring Creek. He admitted this weekend wasn't good enough. The big problem is that he doesn't know why.
Speculation can run rampant for a few weeks. Can two weekends off, alone, do enough to get him back where he was? It's been a very solid rookie 450MX campaign for Hunter, but he's never gauged his season based on results, for better or for worse. For him, if he feels good and rides to his true potential, he's happy. If he doesn't, he's not.
Right now, he's simply not satisfied with these rides.
