A lot of people want Jorge Prado to stop with the “excuses” and deal with the bike he has, but is that fair?
From Jorge Prado’s point of view, as he has said himself, he is a four-time world champion and he expects to be winning or at least in the fight with the Lawrence brothers, Eli Tomac, Chase Sexton and Justin Cooper.
The reality is that is where Prado should be, he is that good and that talented but he needs to feel comfortable enough on the Kawasaki to be able to push to that level safely. Jorge does not like taking risks, he told us a couple of years ago he would rather take a sixth than crash and said to Lewis PhilIips at Vital that he feels he is just cruising at the minute, even when he was in podium contention at Southwick and leading at RedBud.
In his YouTube video on his first season in the US, you could hear Prado tell the mechanics that when he is more comfortable on the bike he will push more and his level will go up. Some people may disagree that Prado can go to the podium level, but from Prado’s side Chase Sexton and Eli Tomac kind of proved his point at Washougal.
Sexton said in the press conference: “I mean, last week I got beat by 48 seconds, second moto, so now I feel like that was a pretty big bridge to gap, but I knew coming in here, I made a lot of bike changes this week with the whole rear end of my bike, and they were quite a bit better. I had a really good day on Wednesday, and I’m like, okay, kind of getting back to where I feel like I can compete for at least a race win.“
Eli Tomac went for a ninth place at Millville, behind Prado in moto two, to battling up front and being back on the podium at Washougal, saying: “I was changing the fork and the shock, so really it was like wholesale bike changes to try to just find a different feel. That’s what happened before Millville and whatnot, so yeah, we were taking some serious swings at Motorcycle Setup and trying to be better.”
The difference is both riders clearly have a better base set-up on their machines than Prado, who despite saying he felt like he got a better base a couple of weeks ago, seems to be searching for something that will work consistently or waiting for changes he knows he needs. Either way it is not happening for him right now and this is not the same rider that won two MXGP titles in a row. Injury and a lack of testing time are all factors with the new team and new series, but it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.
Prado has to be immensely frustrated as should Kawasaki, the team are working hard to find the ideal set-up but it simply is not working and, if you can’t find a set-up he likes, Prado can’t perform to his full potential.
Historically, Kawasaki have had their success with wide open, hanging off the back of the bike riders like Eli Tomac and Ryan Villopoto. Even Jason Anderson is similar to an extent and has had success in supercross. But Jorge rides the complete opposite of that. He is much closer to Jett Lawrence style, and loves a bike with big power, to torque around the track and use the momentum.
His bike was so fast in MXGP that Jeffrey Herlings said he couldn’t ride it because the Dutchman was much more aggressive on the throttle and that didn’t work with such a power house engine. Prado is smooth, isn’t hard on the throttle, and rides on feel and precision. He isn’t getting the feel he needs from the Kawasaki and both sides seem baffled at where to go from here.
In 6-8 weeks focus will change from outdoors to supercross again and Prado will only get a couple of weeks before outdoors next year to find the set-up for 2026. Time is running out but his points about needing the set-up before he can unleash his full potential IS true, the issue is finding it.
If he does, America will see a totally different rider than they are seeing now. If he can’t, what happens next? You can’t imagine the current situation can continue from Jorge or the team’s perspective. Something needs to change.
