While Chase Sexton had the chance to clinch the 450 Motocross Title in Moto 1 today, he didn't technically need the win to do so; instead, end the first 30-minute race of the day 25 points up on Hunter Lawrence. Did that stop the Red Bull KTM rider from forcing the issue and slicing through the top five off the start and into the lead? Not even a little bit. The new layout at Ironman was much to his styling based on how quickly he stretched out his lead to everyone else, ending around 6.5 seconds up on teammate Aaron Plessinger and then 10 seconds on Eli Tomac and Hunter Lawrence.
It's not that things were in doubt coming into this weekend, but after these last two seasons in the Great Outdoors, does this have to feel incredible for Sexton? Coming up just short in an all-time classic season vs. Tomac and then coming up with no dice against Jett Lawrence for an entire summer (plus an injury) had to have taken its toll. Once those first three rounds ended, The No. 4 found his groove and can now call himself KTM's first 450 Motocross Champion since Ryan Dungey in 2015.
Beast of the East
Obviously, the Moto 2 run at Hangtown was the definitive Sexton performance in this title run. There's no arguing about that, but what jumped out to me is how dialed in he's been out east. Not even just this year, but across the last three years, really. Sticking to 2024 to begin this point, Sexton never finished worse than third in an East Coast Pro Motocross Moto (8 East Coast Moto wins in 13 tries this year, including Moto 1 on Saturday) and never finished worse than second in the overall standings at the first five East Coast Nationals on this year's slate.
Not that Sexton wasn't good out west (again, see Hangtown), but there's more than a healthy enough sample size that Sexton is in his bag on these East Coast tracks. While the points per Moto he gained on Hunter Lawrence on those weekends weren't much, they began to stack up after a while, and unfortunately for the Honda HRC rider, he could never get over the hump and make real inroads on Sexton, never mind win a National.
Captain America
While the prospect of 250 Motocross Champion Haiden Deegan making the U.S. Motocross Des Nations team is still up, there are zero doubts about Sexton. He's going to be your ace, most likely in the Open class spot where he has to run back-to-back the final two Motos of that weekend. If 2022 was any indication, he should be up to that challenge, and he's a much better outdoor rider now than he was then.
The Sexton vs. Jett Lawrence element will obviously be big over at Matterly Basin, especially after Jett allegedly shared a TikTok putting down Chase this week, but the bigger picture might be Sexton vs. Jeffrey Herlings. Surprisingly, the Bullet has looked as good as he's had in several years in the MXGP circuit. He still has a shot at the title with four rounds to go, battling Tim Gajser and Jorge Prado. The Dutch are realistically the favorites going into October, and given his injury history and the fact he turns 30 in less than three weeks, there's no guarantee we'll see the Dutchman this good again. If the United States squad wants to win things on British soil, it very well might come down to the two top guns in the KTM rig on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Main Image via KTM
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