Jett Lawrence (450 class) and Haiden Deegan (250 class) battled their way to overall wins at Southwick over the weekend. Both of them spoke with the media after the race in this Debrief feature.

450MX

Image: Octopi Media.

Jett, a first place out there, talk us through it. The rumor was maybe some injury nagging from Hangtown. Did that come into play at all? Did that bother you toward the end of that second moto?

Not too much as I thought it would, but I think it’s just like your body’s not pretty aware that that’s the weakest spot. So I kind of overcompensated on the other half. I was just using my legs so much more and obviously they’re not used to getting used more than normal. I think I just got extra tired. But it is what it is. We’ll go back and work harder.

How is the shoulder doing and are you going to require surgery at some point or is it just slow to heal?

We’ve kind of been discussing really what it actually is, because at first, we thought it might be bruising or something like that, or maybe pulled the muscle. But for how long and slow it’s taking to heal; we might get an MRI or something because the muscle could be torn or something like that. We’re not really 100% on what it is. So we’re going to use one of these breaks to go and get an MRI or even after this one this because we’re not 100% sure what it is because we thought this break might help it and get it back to 100%. Each time I’d go train and ride and use it, it just kind of goes back to that same spot. Then I would heal up and then drop a bit. So it’s kind of been a bit annoying in this break, but no excuses. We still got the overall win. It definitely would make it a lot easier if we were 100%.

To follow up on that a little, are you able to have a full schedule in between weekends still or are you taking time off to let it recover?

No, we’re still riding, trying to stay in touch with the bike. Who knows, maybe this week we might. We’re not 100% sure, so we’ll see.

250MX

Image: Octopi Media.

Haiden, moto number one, that was the Haiden Deegan show. Moto two, you had the gnarly get off. It didn’t matter. Still climbed your way up there. A solid day today. Safe to say Haiden Deegan can ride in the sand?

Yeah, definitely. I had to prove a point when I came here after last year. Kind of the narrative was that I couldn’t ride a sand track, so I had to come here and show everyone I could, and it was a big motivator. I feel like if I could win on this track, that proved I’m pretty much unbeatable. So yeah, I had to put out a good race here.

Is there something special about the last five minutes of the race? Are you kind of pacing yourself and waiting for that charge, or does something just click? We’ve seen some late moto charges from you.

Yeah, definitely. That second moto, I saw Tom [Vialle] literally he dropped maybe a bike length and I just saw blood. That last five minutes, I get another spur of energy somehow. I don’t know if it’s just how I was raised doing motos and always working hard. Especially have being healthy growing up, I think that helps, but I don’t know. Once I saw that, I was just all balls to the walls, sent it till the end and it got real tight at the end and it was a battle to the death. Jo [Shimoda] was sending it. We almost came together and then Tom ended up going down and then yeah, I just rode it in for a second.