By now I think the entire world knows about ‘the crash heard around the world’, between Jett Lawrence and Justin Barcia on Saturday night in St. Louis.
We’ve seen countless arguments emerge about who’s fault it was and how it could have been avoided. Yesterday, Justin Barcia put out a statement on Instagram stating that he didn’t do it intentionally of course.
Well, now we have an official word from Jett Lawrence. The HRC Honda team released the information in their post race press release. The initial word from Honda on Saturday was that thankfully nothing was broken on Jett in the crash.
“It’s just a sucky situation. I just cut down under Hunter, and obviously Barcia was defending his line from someone else on the inside of him—just wrong place, wrong time. He kind of hit my arm pretty good; I got a gnarly Charlie horse. He hit some nerve in my arm, where I kind of lost feeling and strength in my hands. That’s why I was trying to get up and get going early, but I physically couldn’t—I had no strength. It is what it is. Thankfully we had a bit of a buffer on second. We’ve got a break, we’ll come back stronger. We’ve got five races to go.”
Although Jett has had a rough couple of weeks in Seattle and St. Louis, he’s been on the right side of the momentum the entire season. He still holds an eight point lead over Cooper Webb in the standings. Had this 21st place happened in a normal main event, he would have forfeited the red plate. This two week break couldn’t of happened at a better time.
The home stretch is upon us and after this break in the schedule, only five rounds remain to crown the 2024 450SX Champion.
Main Image: Octopi Media
There is no question that it was Barcias fault ! Jet was already heading out of the corner on a typical path , Barcia went into the corner to hot slamed the rear brake to hard picthed the rear of his bike to far to the right grabbed a handful of throttle the rear wheel didn’t get Lose instead grabbed massive traction off the brake burm he created and shot him directly into jets bike at a 90 degree angle.
I really don’t think it was planned by Barcia but he does have history of questionable tactics but he’s trying to do better.
Malcolm Stewart was taken out several times in 2022 (I think) cutting down early from the berm. That move is fast, but does open up a rider to a collision from a rider no playing “follow the leader” through the corner.