Roger De Coster says he can’t always understand what Chase Sexton is saying when he delivers feedback on the bike, seemingly creating some confusion as to what direction they need to go in with the KTM machine.
De Coster, never afraid to tell things as it is, said in his interview with Swapmoto: “I’ve been lucky to have a lot of good riders, top riders, champions, that have been really open with me. I feel I have been really lucky with that. I think I have an advantage because I have always been very close to the bike and what makes a difference on the bike. I always try to understand what the rider is trying to explain and that in itself is sometimes really difficult, because every rider has a difficult way to explain the same thing.
“Sometimes what they tell you doesn’t make any sense but they do feel something, and sometimes they don’t know how to explain it to you or we don’t know how to understand it. The more intricate and complicated the bike gets the more difficult it is to make progress or to make it better on a particular race day. Like with Chase, he can feel things no-one else feels on the bike and sometimes we can understand it and sometimes we can’t, you know?“
Sexton is currently sidelined after his crash at Pala, with no defined injury, and the rumour mill suggests he may be back at Red Bud, but that same rumour mill also heavily suggests he could be on Kawasaki for 2026 with Eli Tomac going to KTM.
However, the grass isn’t always greener and Kawasaki aren’t having a great year themselves as they try and get Jorge Prado comfortable enough to show his true level in outdoors.
If Sexton does indeed go to Kawasaki it will be fascinating to see how quickly he adapts to that machine compared to the KTM, that saw him, after some teething problems in supercross 2025, go on to win the US outdoors last year and nearly win supercross this year!
