Cooper Webb isn’t afraid of honesty. The championship leader got a lesson in whoops speed from Chase Sexton in East Rutherford and he wasn’t afraid to admit it in the post-race TV interview on the press conference.
Webb said on the podium: “It’s tough, he was on it and he was killing me in those two sets of whoops. It’s something we’ve tried to fix this year, but these are gnarly. They have ruts all the way down them. I’m still pretty mind blown how he was able to do it so good. You’re trying to just stay with him and he rode awesome. He was inching away, and those whoops were really killing me. I got a little tight, and that was all she wrote. With that being said, he did what he needed to do, he rode a great race, he kicked my butt, and I didn’t put my money where my mouth was. We’ll go back, re-group. Definitely bummed on that finish, we wanted more fight tonight, but it is what it is and we’ll come back swinging… and try come win next week.”
Then in the press conference Cooper talked in more detail about the whoop section that ruined his hopes of the win thanks to Chase incredible speed through both sets:
“I need to blitz whoops if you wanna win, that’s the bottom line. And I tried there for a little bit and just, I wasn’t able to do it, right? So we’ve been working on it, but tonight there was ruts through every single whoop.
“So it’s genuinely impressive what Chase did through there. So yeah, I need to work on that clearly. And I feel like for me, that was where he was just night and day better. And early I stayed with him everywhere else, but the whoops he would blow my doors off and then it was catch up from there. So I feel mentally, I’m almost better knowing, hey, I was just as, in my opinion, I was probably right on par everywhere else. But it was the two sets of whoops that really killed me tonight. And probably should have been a bigger gap if I’m being honest.”
Webb has a nine point lead with three races to go but, if Sexton wins all three, he wins the title even if Webb finishes second each time out. Effectively, Webb needs one win and two seconds to wrap the title up, but if the whoops are like Saturday for the final three races, he might have his work cut out. The Star team are probably making more whoops sections on their Florida track for Webb to practice on this week as we speak!
