Troy Dog
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The 2024 Monster Energy Supercross Championship is entering round three this weekend in San Diego, but we may as well call it round one. We’ve seen some trends, but nothing is truly telling us how the rest of the series is going to go.
The first round is always a weird outlier and doesn’t show a sign of things to come. All the old sayings come into play, some riders debut their new rides, and things are still getting sorted. Then we had a mud race in San Francisco. As we all know, mud is the great equalizer, anything can happen and things go wrong. For the most part at mud races the riders are just trying to survive.
The point of this column this week is to highlight some story lines that are going on and how I have more questions than answers leading into San Diego.
– Mookie has had some bad luck so far and hasn’t been able to show his speed. Will he be able to stay off of the ground and get back into the top five?
– Jordon Smith has been strong in the first two rounds, but his title rival RJ Hampshire already had his bad race in San Francisco. History shows that Smith will have a bad race as well. Can he stay on the podium and show that this is truly his year?
– Derek Drake has two top 15s in two rounds for BarX Suzuki. Is this just where he belongs now?
– RJ Hampshire lost the red plate and had a rough race in the mud. Will he be back in the winner’s circle on a dry track?
– Will the Christian Craig and Jo Shimoda onesies make a return?
– Speaking of Jo Shimoda, he had a bike issue and DNF’d San Francisco. Does he still have a chance at this title considering the history of Hampshire and Smith and their mistakes?
– Levi Kitchen is strong and steady this year. How many more races until he gets a win and asserts dominance?
– Chase Sexton has been strong on his new Red Bull KTM, does he have the front end tuck figured out on this new machine?
– Justin Barcia has been very sick to start the season, does he get that sorted and start contending for the podium?
– Ken Roczen came from last to third in San Francisco. It could have been two bad races in a row, but Ken put his head down and dug deep. How many rounds go by until he gets his first win of the season?
– Jason Anderson had a great Anaheim, but then had a huge crash off the start in San Francisco, he came back to 12th. Can he remain consistently on the podium this season?
I have more questions about all of this, but you get where I’m coming from. This third round is going to tell us a lot about the direction that this series is going to go. Riders like Jett Lawrence, Hunter Lawrence, Aaron Plessinger, Dylan Ferrandis, Adam Cianciarulo, Cooper Webb, and Eli Tomac are all going to be fine.
Next week I’ll be able to grab these questions and answer them, but for now let’s just enjoy another “opening round”. It’s a fresh start for everyone and let’s hope we’ve got all that mud cleaned out of us at this point in the week!
