Chase Sexton saw some improvements at Millville with a 3-3 for third overall but he wasn’t able to sustain the pace he needed to run with Jett and Hunter Lawrence for 30 minutes and the defending outdoor champ said he could have walked faster than he was going down the hills!
Sexton, who has went back to some 2024 settings on the KTM in a bid to get more comfort, wasn’t shy in saying where he needed to improve: “Go fast down the hills, I was losing a lot of time, and after about 15 minutes I said yeah, I’m going to just get to the next race and not try and kill myself down these things. For me they felt really sketchy, and the track was very fast, so I was just a little bit uncomfortable, but also they kept the same pace the whole time and just pulled away, so they were riding really well and looked like they were really comfortable, so yeah, we lived to fight for another weekend. I just want to get better and better, I feel like my early laps were better today, but yeah, just really slow, I think I could have walked down the hill faster than I was going.
“I didn’t really have too high of expectations coming in (at RedBud). For whatever reason, I felt like I was a rookie again, at Red Bud. I don’t know why, I felt super out of place, and I was able to ride pretty well second moto, but I still had a ways to go, and even today, I got a little bit better speed-wise at the beginning. But just like I said, we got a lot of work to do with the bike, with myself, and it’s just an ongoing battle. But I think next weekend, WashougaI, I really like, and from here on out of the tracks, I really enjoy, so we’ll see, just try and get better and try and battle with these two, so they’ve been crushing it.
Interestingly and in contrast to how Chase seemed to be feeling on the KTM, Jett said you have to trust your bike to go fast down the hills: “I think you just got to trust your bike is the main thing down the hill, that hill you really got to have a lot of trust in your bike and your ability in case something does go wrong, and yeah, even though I was sending it a little bit, I was still losing some time to Hunter, he was riding, he was jumping that last little bit that was getting us that little bit extra time on me.”
Chase also admitted he is only back for the outdoors in order to improve his SMX ranking for the play-offs: “I hadn’t missed a race in a while, so it was nice to have time off, but I wanted to come back, obviously, to get in a good enough point seat for the first race. I came in leading last few years, and it hasn’t worked out very well. I don’t think I finished the second moto at the last round, so just try and come in and get a good seat coming in, and then also just try and get some momentum back on my side and start to fire those last three outdoors.”
