Round 12 of the 2025 Monster Energy Supercross Championship in Foxborough saw Aaron Plessinger claim a season-first victory in the 450SX class in treacherously muddy conditions, while Chance Hymas secured his first-ever 250SX win with a convincing performance at Gillette Stadium. Both riders spoke to the media following the main events for this Debrief feature.

450SX

Image: Octopi Media.

Aaron, you were almost expected to do well tonight and had a positive attitude throughout the day, although when you were on the start line, was the positive attitude still there?

I was nervous! In a mud race, you never really know what’s going to happen. You can be as confident as you can be, but when that gate drops, you never really know what’s going to happen, like in the 250 race with the big crash in the first turn. So you just got to be ready, you’ve got to be alert, and if you make it out of the first turn clean, you’ve got to push to the front as soon as you can. So, that’s what I tried to do, I tried to keep it on two wheels after I got to the front, and knew Shane [McElrath] was right behind me for a second, and then you know after I got the lead, I just kind of cruised it on in, I mean it was a tough cruise, it wasn’t easy by any means. [My] boots were getting stuck in the mud, lappers were everywhere, and yeah, it was tough, but I had a lot of fun.

Congratulations on your second pro career 450SX supercross win. Just take us through how gnarly it was out there, and was this one a lot different than your San Diego win?

Yeah, San Diego was a little muddy, this was a whole different breed, man. Like Shane said, when the rain stopped and the mud tacked up, it got so heavy, and it was almost like when your foot touched the ground, it almost wanted to stick there. It’s hard to explain unless you were out there. In the heat race, my dad was texting my wife, telling me to stand up, and I wish he was here because that was a lot harder of a task than any other old mud race! It was kind of like slot car racing – you just take the rut and stay in it for the rest of the section. But no, it felt really good, honestly. Today doesn’t feel like a real Supercross because we only had one qualifying, and we were sitting around until about 1:30, so yeah, it just feels like a weird day. That main event took it out of me, I’m pretty tired now, and yeah, I’m going to rest up tonight and rest happy.

Can you just take us through that first lap? It seems like everyone was learning the track and looking where to go, and you were the only rider racing and going for it.

Yeah, I knew when I didn’t get the holeshot, I had to pin it to the front or else my goggles were going to be destroyed. I picked tear-offs for the main event, so I didn’t get any water under my rolloffs, so I knew I had to get to the front quickly.  In that condition, when the track’s still fresh, I mean as fresh as, you know, they bladed it with the dozer, it was still deep, but you can kind of push it and not really worry about the ruts because some of them are gone. You’ve got to look ahead because they like to back-blade a little bit behind the start of the rut, so you’ll be going through a flat section, and then you come into the rut. So it’s a little bit sketchy, you just got to look forward. But that first lap, I knew I had to get to the front, and I kind of was worried about my clutch during the end of the race because that first lap, I was really giving her the beans.

Was there much that you changed as far as the bike setup between the heat race and the main, or was that just more a decision to skin it back?

I  just went a little bit softer on everything. It wasn’t like huge changes, but I just told the guys I needed a little bit more feel, and I was struggling a little bit to stand up in the heat race. So yeah, I just told them to soften everything up, and I’ll let her eat because, really, in this stuff, the team can’t help you that much. It’s just a kind of survival and get a start and try to get out front, and the rest is pretty much up to you.

250SX

Image: Octopi Media.

Chance, to now be an established winner in both Pro Motocross and Supercross, I think for fans to fully appreciate the magnitude of this moment, they have to understand the scope of these last 14 months alone for you. So just give us that story if you can summarize it.

I don’t even know where to start. First off, racing all last year with no ACL in my knee, and really only doing eight races in my rookie year meant I had to do a lot of catchup last year, and then missed out on Motocross of Nations last year with my knee, and the rest of SMX. [I] got that fixed, and the goal was just to make Tampa, you know, or come halfway through this series, so yeah, once we got to Tampa, it was just like, let’s learn each weekend and see what we can do. [I] clicked off the best finish of my career at Daytona with a fourth, and it kind of went downhill for me after that I think – I was just getting too greedy with what I wanted, and you know, having only two weeks on the bike before Tampa didn’t help at all, and especially with the new bike this year, it’s quite a bit different than last year’s bike. On top of getting my health back to 100%, I’m also trying to develop a new bike, so I have a good team behind me and we worked our butts off to get where we’re at right now, and hopefully this is just the start of a good trend going forward. It means a lot to me, it means a lot to the people around me. I mean, they’ve seen me at my lowest, and there’s a lot of hard work that goes into this. There’s times that you you don’t feel like this is ever possible and those are the days that you push the hardest, and you always have that belief that you can do it, because times like this – I don’t want to say they’re rare, but it doesn’t happen very often, so you’ve got to appreciate it a little bit more than usual.

Can you take us through the first three laps of the main event? Because you guys don’t see the track, everybody opts to go out or not go out for the sighting lap. You see the SMX guys go out, two LCQs, 450 heat races – it’s a completely different track than when you went out there. How do you go through those first laps, not grenade the bike, not get it stuck, and make moves?

I think from the start of qualifying, we all realized that we were going to roll everything. And, between qualifying and the racing, it didn’t seem like they touched some of the rhythms. So I think if you could bust a double out here and there – if you could – it was sweet, and you could make a lot of time. But for me, I was just rolling everything. Once they changed the triples to the doubles, I was doing those. But my wheels were not really leaving the ground. I was trying to be cool, calm, and collected the whole time. They dozed some parts of the track, and you could see that, but it was just so you could cross the ruts. Once one lap went by, we were back to normal, and if you got stopped, I think you’re getting stuck there. So, I was trying to figure out, for one, who was in front of me, and two, I was just trying to keep my cool. I knew some mistakes were going to come up, and I felt like if I kept riding my own race and didn’t push where I didn’t need to push more than I needed to, I could be solid. I could start clicking a couple of guys off. And I took advantage of a couple of mistakes – a few mistakes actually – and that’s when I got the lead. With the race only being eight minutes, when you’re winning, that’s sweet. My mechanic was giving me the time on the board, and once he gave me three minutes to go, I saw we were getting pretty deep in lappers, and there were bodies everywhere. So I was just like, “Dude, can we get this thing over with already?” But yeah, it was a bit catastrophic because I was way outside on the start, and halfway down the straight, I’m getting splattered. So I’m pulling tear-offs, hearing the crowd go off – I don’t know what’s going on inside of me. Seeing all that, and then I came around the corner in like fourth or fifth wasn’t half bad. There was a lot going on.

It’s no secret that the Honda team this year has had some struggles with Hunter and Jett (Lawrence) out, but you and Jo (Shimoda) are holding it down for the 250 guys. What’s it like to reward them with a win?

Yeah, it’s a big deal. I carry a lot of weight on my shoulders. Honestly, it’s a good position to be in, but these guys have been my biggest supporters through all my struggles. Being able to reward them with something like this – especially with the last couple of weekends I’ve had being a bit of a struggle – is a big deal. Especially for my family and I, it’s just a big deal. Like I said, they’ve seen me at my lowest. The whole team around, we’ve been working our butts off to get here, and there’s been a lot of patience all around, just kind of letting me figure it out. So yeah, I’m glad I could reward them like this.

Could you give us a scoop on your gate pick? Is that something you decide, or do you and your mechanic decide? Was there any discussion about where you were going to start tonight? Because it obviously worked out for you, congratulations on that.

Yeah, thank you. Me and Dan Truman had a little conversation about it. For the heat races, they don’t open up the very inside and very outside gates, they open those up for the LCQs. So that very outside gate had only two races on it. The way the track was after the whoop section, all the mud was getting pushed to the inside of the track. So I figured if I could get out and get a good jump, I would get a good drive halfway down the straight, and that could give me that little bit of an edge going into the first corner. Also, for me, where I was at, I didn’t really have anything to lose. It’s one of those big risks to take, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. For me, it worked. So it’s always cool when you can take a big risk like that and it works out.

I want to know, a couple of you guys got your first podiums here. What’s going to be your post-race celebration? How are you going to let loose?

[I’ll] probably hit a sports bar on the way back and get a big burger, that’s probably where I’m at. Cheat on the diet a little bit.