After Pit Beirer said during the KTM press conference last week that the AMA riders race too much, Jett Lawrence and Chase Sexton have came out strong with a similar assessment following the first SMX rounds in Charlotte in the post-race press conference.
Jett Lawrence: I think the 31 rounds is kind of stupid, it’s nice when you have an injury and can come back but if you look at any other top sport, they are not doing this many races. I think the only reason we come back is that pay check at the end of the day, for the bonus. I think if it wasn’t for that, a lot of guys wouldn’t show up, I hope in the future we have less because I think it make it more rare, you don’t see F1 or Motogp doing 36 rounds, it makes it more of a special ocassion.
Mainly just cut the rounds down, I think it would make it a lot safer for other riders, too because then at least for these last ones, when you need the energy, you have that because you aren’t going through however many other rounds before.
Even supercross, I think there are 17 rounds there, it’s great and always been like that but we don’t need 17 rounds. It gets to a point where someone has won so many rounds and they have a points lead, it’s useless. Whereas if they cut to 14/15 it makes it more exciting because everything is closer, you have to do things now. The 250s are exciting because you have to execute every round whereas 450s you can have a bad race and still have a chance to win it. Hopefully in the future they cut more rounds off, so it makes it more exciting for athletes too and they might still stick around more because it’s not wear and tear on their body throughout the whole year and have such a short off-season and then try and get going again.
The MXGP guys, they have a long off-season, they get to recoup and then going and doing 19-20 rounds. I think it’s more for us riders, it’s safety, we are trying to push the edge and not going to back down but at some point it’s still dangerous for us if we want to try and do this for a long time.
Sexton: Racing 31 races in a year is way too much. They took one Pro Motocross away just to add three more SMX, they put a pay check at the end of it, but they don’t have to do through the gruelling training days we have. We have a whole off-season then during the week, we have to ride to be good on the weekend’s. It’s a lot, I think there was four guys who raced every race this year which is stupid for how many guys show up every weekend. Hopefully MX Sports and Feld see that they change something, it’s a little bit dumb.
It’s tough. After you put a lot of emphasis on supercross and motocross, it’s hard to rebuild that for these three races, it’s tough. At the end of the day it’s going to take the top 7,8,9 riders to come together and say we aren’t racing this much. At the end of the day, you want the sport to grow, so I see both sides, but you don’t want to see guy getting injured you want to race, you want them to be there the whole season. It’s cool everyone comes back for these races (SMX) but you want everyone there for the primary seasons. I think there needs to less races but we need to have a voice, they kind of control what the narrative is and we don’t really get much say.
Tomac: I had the last two summers off, unfortunately so i don’t know, either way it’s a long season, there’s not much difference between 29 and 32 races. What’s nice is you get that pay check at the end 0 get something for it! It’s hard to say what the magic number is. When you go year after the year, it’s the accumlation, that becomes the problem, how many years can you really go? I don’t have an answer.
