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Lost in all the talk surrounding Haiden Deegan’s first 450 win, Ken Roczen’s return, and Hunter Lawrence’s disastrous day at the SMX World Championship Playoffs opener is Red Bull KTM’s Jorge Prado.
Who—checks standings—is leading the championship.
While plenty of the attention coming out of Columbus has understandably centered elsewhere, Prado quietly put together exactly the kind of day he needed. He entered the opening round second in points following successful Monster Energy Supercross and Pro Motocross campaigns in his second year racing full-time in the U.S. Then, in some of the nastiest conditions we’ve seen all season, he stayed out of trouble, landed on the podium, and left Columbus with the red plate and a two-point advantage heading into Round 2 on Saturday.
And if you’ve been reading this website lately, you know I’ve beaten this drum to death: I had high expectations for Prado entering the Playoffs. No, I didn’t pick him to win the championship. But seeing him on the podium at the opener certainly wasn’t a surprise.
Of course, there are still two rounds remaining, the points only get more valuable from here, and the conditions in Columbus made the opener anything but normal. But after spending year two trying to reignite his career after a disastrous 2025 season, he’ll head to Los Angeles with the red plate.
Following his podium finish in Columbus, Prado spoke with the media about surviving the mud, taking over the championship lead and more.
How are you feeling after this one? Is there relief, excitement? Where are you?
Jorge Prado: I think it’s kind of crazy to be a leading right now in the SMX points. And then also the racing was very good for me today and the improvement of getting lapped twice in a mud supercross race this year to finishing on the podium, is amazing. I’m very happy about the improvement and I’m really looking forward for the next rounds.
You got good starts in both motos and it seems like they really quickly got the pace going and maybe it took you a lap or two to get going. Can you just talk about the process of figuring out the track, figuring out the lines and everything on those opening laps?
I don’t think it’s even from the opening laps. I just think Haiden and Ken, they were faster than us. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the beginning or later in the race, they were just faster all the time. If I start in front and they are faster, they will pass me. It’s simple as that. So I think I just had that pace for third place like I did and I stuck to it, try not to make too many mistakes. It was pretty hard with lappers because they don’t jump pretty much any of the rhythms or the big doubles so then you can’t go over them. You got to use your head a little bit and then you lose time and the guy behind is jumping and it’s catching you. It was kind of hard. It was good to get two good starts. I think that was the key for me today.
You had a good Supercross season, seemed to catch good momentum the last few outdoor races and a podium today. Do you think this is the Jorge Prado you wanted American fans to see when you came to America?
Well, I think I can’t be in a better spot than leading the SMX championship. So yes, hopefully I can bring this to the last round. I finished the outdoor season very strong and hopefully we can end strong also the SuperMotocross season.
We definitely heard you talking quite a bit about your setup that you got right during outdoors at the end of the season. How much of that actually translated over to this SMX round and how much will you be able to kind of apply to the rest of the rounds as well?
During the break, during outdoors, we changed some stuff on the bike that was clearly better. We still need to think about what’s possible with that setup in Supercross.
Did you prepare any differently coming into this race as the SMX opener?
Until Ironman, I was only riding outdoors. And then after Ironman, I started riding supercross. So that’s basically the difference. Started riding the supercross bike again and supercross tracks. For example, on press day, we could see that it was pretty supercrossy over here. You got to ride supercross for these SMX rounds.
With this podium today, this means the opener for Supercross, Motocross, and today, you finished on the podium and you haven’t even raced a hybrid track until this weekend. Is that just your confidence coming into the beginning of every championship knowing that you can be in it or was this just everything clicked today?
I don’t think I was ready for a third-place coming to Anaheim, but I did it and even I won the heat race over there. And then coming into outdoors, I also started the season with a second overall. And then today again on the podium. I don’t know, it looks like I’m good at starting new seasons. Hopefully we can end the seasons this way as well.
What did you do during the break and how’d you stay mentally in it?
Today has been a crazy day because you get to the track thinking you’re going to ride. Then it started raining so hard. It rained all morning, pretty much all day. And then everything started to get more delayed and delayed and then you’re not riding and then you still need to be at the track, but then you want to go maybe to the hotel and get back. We just stayed at the track. I watched some Netflix with my girl and I relax and just wait for the gates to drop and everything clicked. It was good. Maybe we don’t need to practice anymore and go to main events in the next race as well.
Typically, in America, we have Press Day on Friday, but now with the SMX playoffs, we have a bit more free practice. I know today was a little weird in terms of the weather canceling qualifying, but did you feel this weekend was a bit closer to what you were used to in the MXGP with the practice sessions yesterday?
I don’t know what to say. Yesterday we did ride, but today we went straight into racing. I haven’t done this in my life, not even a sighting lap and straight into a main event that counts for points. If you think about it, it’s kind of crazy. Luckily enough, we got to ride the track yesterday, so it wasn’t as dangerous as if we just start riding it or racing it without even a lap on it. It’s also crazy how fast we all can adapt to a track with only riding it just a few times yesterday and in totally different conditions than today, right? First lap of our main event, we were already hitting everything. Felt like we were riding in the morning. So yeah, it was a challenge to get your mindset to go racing where you’ve been four hours on the couch doing nothing and eating and drinking coffee and just chilling there. It’s hard to get that racing mentality from pretty much doing nothing all day.
Photos: octopi.media
