We had the chance to catch up with Chase Sexton in the KTM press conference and got to ask him a couple of questions about his season.
We started by asking Chase was there a moment he knew he could win outdoors after a tough year in supercross:
“I think, first with the Supercross bike, this week we’re going to test for SMX but a lot of the stuff that we learned from outdoors now we can kind of take it and switch it over to Supercross and we’ll see. I think there’s a lot of stuff that we learned and a lot of stuff we can apply to Supercross. SMX is kind of… it’s a mix obviously, so I think we’ll see the real real finished product in 2025 but yeah, for me I think my speed and I was able to really put more pressure on this year and then, yeah, every race I think we started to get better and better but honestly, that track has never been my specialty, I’ve never been a sand rider and winning a moto there is crazy. I have never won a moto there, I’ve never really been comfortable, so that race win for me was kind of the kick start to my really run after that, honestly.”
On his better starts from Millville, Sexton explained how they changed the clutch to give him a better feel:
“Yeah, the the clutch thing was nice for me because.  The release was more comfortable, and it’s more to what I’m used to as far as what I grew up riding.  Before, I was a little bit on and off with the release, and it was pretty far to the end and like the pull the lever so. When I went to that it, well actually, Ian was the one that kind of suggested it after first practice, you know. I came off with track and I was pretty pretty upset. And he’s like, all right, let’s put the clutch on and we’ll see how it goes. And I ended up pulling my only holeshot of the year at that race! So, yeah, it was good and my starts still need improving. They’re not all there still, but it definitely helped.
Sexton also admitted to us it has been a hard road mentally ever since he won the supercross title last year to then have Jett win everything:
“Yeah, it was tough because I think in 23, I was starting to get to that point in Supercross,  I think I won four out of the last six races and I was getting to the point where I’m like, okay, I’m, I’m starting to find my groove, I’m starting to kind of get to that new level and then I ended up crashing at Pala and hitting my head a little bit. I crashed again in practice, and just I was just dealing with some stuff as far as blood tests and all that and then also hitting my head. I was not really in a good spot mentally, and then I came back kind of early and just wasn’t feeling great, and then this got my my ass kicked all season, which was not great, and I never really got to get back to 100%. I was better, but I still was like on the teetering point of being good and not and then”.Â
“Switching teams, I struggled with the bike changes in supercross and then was able to build towards the end of the season and then now this outdoors I was able to overcome almost a year straight of this kind of struggle so, yeah, it was it was a tough road. But, like I said, when it gets harder I feel like I tend to shine so, yeah, I was able to kind of just overcome those mental hurdles and I’ve had a lot of people helping in my corner and trying to get me through it“.
“So it was very rewarding this summer, just to be able to overcome that because the battle inside your own head is the hardest one to win and like I said, it’s rewarding and I feel like I have momentum on my side and was able to kind of reach that new level.”
