The 13th round of the 2021 Monster Energy Supercross championship is in the books. Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Eli Tomac took the win in 450SX action while rookie Nate Thrasher dominated the 250SX West field on his Monster Energy Star Racing Yamaha. The winning duo was available to the media following the race for this Debrief feature. 

450SX

Image: Octopi Media.

Eli you were right behind that lead group of Aaron Plessinger (Monster Energy Star Racing Yamaha), Chase Sexton (Team Honda HRC) and Cooper Webb (Red Bull KTM) up until Aaron crashed and it seemed like right after he went down it seemed like you dropped the hammer and upped the intensity. Was that coincidence or did you realize you could really make a shot at the win?

Aaron was pretty far out, I was pretty nervous and I was like ‘I don’t know if we’re going to end up catching him.’ So once he went down there was a little extra hope, right? To be honest, I felt like I was getting better as the race went on, I found a couple of better lines in both sets of whoops and that was it. Finding some more lines, Aaron going down you know, and kind of giving me that hope to make the push to the end. That’s the way it was, I was happy with everything motorcycle-wise and it turned into a hell of a track by the end of the day.

How do you approach a race like today where you’ve got limited practice, you think you’ve got another qualifying session and then that one goes away. Very limited time on the track and a lot to learn out there. What was it like and were you still figuring it out during the main event? 

Yeah it was hard. You hit the points right there, it was a longer track and it was basically two tracks in one. So having one practice was tough and having such a long lap you really only got a few laps. We were getting cut laps because it was so long then we only had one practice. I was pretty notchy in that practice, I mean, I overshot the double on the finish line lane and smashed my face, the whole practice I was missing rhythms. So I don’t know, got my act together more in that heat race and like you said it’s tough but the good thing is, everyone was in the same boat.

A few weeks ago you said it was a two-person race for the 450 championship, discounting yourself from contention, do you feel any different after tonight and the next two races with a similar track?

I don’t know. I’m still a ways out, I’m still 36 [points back] so it’s still out there. Anything can happen of course but all I can do is try to win. The good thing is yeah, I feel like I have an advantage on this type of track, so we’ll see how it goes into Salt Lake and in the next few rounds.

We’ve done Daytona a lot and that’s obviously a unique place. Would you like to see more of these speedway races, longer laps that are more supercrossy? 

Eli Tomac likes these races, I just don’t know what everyone else things. [laughs] That’s it right, I feel like there is more room, period. It’s more high speed so some guys may not like it, but there’s more room to make passes, you’re not stuck in one line in as many area’s and it’s just a bigger track right. So yes, I would like to have more, but this year’s unique here where we’re going to have three here so I don’t know, maybe one of these added on [to the normal season] with Daytona would be cool.

250SX West

Image: Octopi Media.

When you woke up today did you have any idea this was going to happen and now that it has, what’s it feel like?

Yeah it was good, we got off to kind of a good start to the day in timed qualifying and we only had six or so laps on the track today. So you just kind of had to learn the track and adapt quickly. Second timed qualifying got canceled so we had a decent gate pick going into the night and we knew we could make that work. Then we had a little trouble in the heat race, a couple crashes, but I had good speed so I felt like it was going to be a good night I just needed to get in the LCQ and make good work. Got through that and ended up winning the night. Surreal moment for sure, dreamed of this my whole life pretty much so, it’s not sunk in yet but it probably will tomorrow. We’ll just take it day by day then we gotta keep getting better, I mean there’s still things to improve on so we got to be ready for Tuesday and then Saturday. That’s the good thing about these three races back to back, you don’t really get time to [let it sink in] so you just gotta put your head down and go back to work.

How do you explain everything clicking today? 

I was feeling good all day. We had the three-week break there, we put in a lot of work. Things just started clicking today, we had two big set of whoops today and I felt like I was really good in them, so we clicked away every lap in the whoops and I felt like that gave me the lead that I needed to win. A lot of people were trying to jump and it just wasn’t working, so skimming was the way for me. So I skimmed the whole main and I felt like it was the best way to get around the track.

Heading into this weekend, your best race so far this year had been a ninth. You struggled going into this, even had a few LCQ appearances. Had you been getting frustrated or did you just know that it would possibly be coming? 

I’ve been a little frustrated. I’ve been dealing with a little bit of arm pump in the mains. I feel like I’ve had good speed to run up in the top five. Just been getting a little bit of arm pump late in the motos has kind of been my downfall. But we’ve been working really hard on the bike and we’ve got it really good right now so it’s kind of went away. I feel like that’s one of the things that has put me a little bit higher now. In that three-week break we really worked hard trying to get a little better late in the motos and just to be better overall. We’ve worked on the whoops a lot too so I think that’s the key to supercross pretty much, if you can be better in the whoops than everyone else you’ve got a good chance to win.

Is there anything we’ve taken from your teammates while at the practice track that’s helped to make the improvements you have so far? 

Yeah for sure. A lot of my teammates have won a lot, like Justin [Cooper] here, I can kind of watch what he does during timed qualifying and stuff like that. I’ve struggled that this year, just trying to get good laps in and he’s really good at that. So you can watch him and be better there. Craig and Nichols and all them have won a lot of races this year also, so they kind of know how to win, so everybody at the team kind of knows how to win. So you can take every [inaudible] from them and just try to build.