Jason Thomas (0:00)

A pulp MX Network production. A cerebral and experienced look into the racing action from the week that was. This is Industry Seating with Jason Thomas. Presented by Guts Racing Pro, Glow Wash Works Connection, Bass Foundry, TL Speed Shop, Grandstone Boots and Fly Racing. Welcome to a special Spanish edition. No, I'm not going to be speaking Spanish. I'm just coming to you from Spain. A Spanish edition of the podcast. My name is Jason Thomas. It is Sunday, March 16th and it's in the evening. Well it's almost 6pm where I am, which means it's mid morning, almost noon depending on where you are. Maybe a little in the afternoon for those of you stateside. But I was just at the Spanish mxgp. I am currently driving to back to Madrid to fly home tomorrow. So if you hear some roadside noise or background noise or anything, I apologize but had a few hour drive and wanted to get this done while it was all fresh in my head. Also talk a little bit about what we saw in Indianapolis a little over a week ago and of course we are on an off weekend, first off weekend of 2025 for the SMX World Championship. I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Guts Racing Works Connection, Plum Creek Funding, TL Speed Shop and their new race-rentals.com website, Grandstone Boots Fly Racing. Thank you to all of them for being on board. So let's jump into this, let's start with Indy because I'll wrap it with mxgp. I'm not going to go super in depth. It's a week ago, nobody's like super know engaged in that race anymore. We're kind of thinking about the weekend off in Birmingham next week and all those things. But I thought it was incredibly important in the 450 class for Cooper Webb to do what he did. And if you are a part of my Patreon podcast, you would have heard me talk about the dynamics of an off weekend and how important it was to create momentum going into that. Because those thoughts fester when you have downtime. You don't have that quick return to the races to right or wrong or just fix any injustice. You ride poorly, you can't just get back out there and fix it. So you really want that last race before and off weekend to go well because you want the last memory before you have all these days off to be a positive. And for Cooper Webb, he did exactly that. He did what you would want to see from him. Got the start, got around Barsha super quickly, which is. It doesn't sound like it's all that Important with the way Barsha's kind of struggled the last year or two. But Barsha is notoriously difficult to pass and if you let him get settled in and get some confidence early on, the job would have only gotten worse. Difficult. So I thought that it was important and job well done by Webb to get Varsha quickly and then he could set out about his business. And boy, did he do that. You know, he kind of made, I think he made a comment to Film and Goetti after the race about how just easy it felt, you know, like one of the easiest wins of his career. And it wasn't easy, but it's a relative thing because you look at the lead he had and there are subtle variables there, there's nuance to it, just like all things in life. But he looks back and he sees his practice partner and a close friend in Justin Cooper in second place, which does have an effect. There's a subliminal effect there of having Jacob in second because he's not going to feel nervousness or uncertainty. He knows exactly what J Coop has in the tank. They practice together all the time. So there's a lot of familiarity there and that brings a level of calm and it's just like a soothing effect to the main event because these are high pressure environments. Stressful. You know, if he had looked back and seen Kenny or Chase, it just is a very different thing. So he looks back, sees Jacob is like, all right, I got to get a weed, I got to get a lead now. And, you know, then Chase gets up around Varsha into second and then the dynamic changes a little bit. And I should have mentioned Jacob later because it was, you know, the last half of the race was more jk, but the first few laps he definitely was a little stressed, I think with Sexton. But once, you know, there was like a three second kind of gap that we've seen Jet Lawrence get so many times. And it was staying constant. That three seconds would go to two and a half, then 3.8, you know, but it was staying in a range. And then all of a sudden something happened and I don't know if Chase made a mistake or Coop dropped his lap times, but something changed and the lead went out to like eight seconds. And when it did that, the entire rest of the race changed with it because the feeling of pressure, you know, when kind of Coop's tight, right, everything's really compressed and like they're like yo yoing back and forth. You don't know who's going to win the race. And Coop would be stress, like he would be stressed out there, you know, not like I think Chase is going to catch me, but it's, you know, the race is hanging in the balance in that moment still. Chase thinks he can still win, but it's, you know, if this was bicycle racing, he would basically say that coupe broke him, you know, and what happens in bicycle racing is a guy will try to make a break and he'll go and like just full out and you're, you're trying to sense if your competition is struggling or a little bit weak or not. And they'll just make a full out blitz and charge and try to basically create a gap to where they can't see him anymore. And you break the spirit of your competitor. And I don't know the origins of it, but in reality that's what you're doing is you're breaking the will and breaking their spirit. So they're not thinking about trying to win anymore. They're not thinking about being able to beat you anymore. And that's what happened when the weed went out to eight seconds. So that was really important. Then Sexton, I don't know if he got rattled, I don't know if he lost his concentration, but I do know that he crashed in the sand and he made, you know, kind of a silly mistake. But that's, you know, it's kind of been the norm with Chase lately. Like, what else are we supposed to say? We supposed to ignore the fact that it's been happening over and over? I don't think we can. But he made another mistake, gave away more points, and then the dynamic got to where J. Coop and then he's just cruising like he's got a 10 plus second lead. He's just bringing the thing home. And you can't ask for a better setup than that than having a practice partner riding shotgun, you know, 10 seconds back, that's just as good as it's going to get, really, for anybody. So for Webb, I'm sure he slept well, you know, and nothing's for sure. You know, all this stuff could change in a moment's notice. One first turn, crash. Think about Nashville 2023 and the heat race. Like Coop falls over, no big deal, and Cincinnillo hits him in the head and it's season done. You know, it can happen that fast and Webb knows that all too well, so he's not taking anything for granted. But would you rather be 15 points up or 15 points down? It's that simple. So there is some satisfaction that Comes with it. You do breathe a little easier, but you understand the jobs have done and you just have to, you have to close. You have to be a closer down the stretch. And I think if we're looking at anybody, you know, maybe sans jet and saying, who do you trust when you're riding this well to kind of close the deal? Deal. How are you not going to put Webb right at the top of that conversation? I don't know how you wouldn't do that. So great job for Webb. Catbird seed position here now for Sexton. You know, touched on it there for a second, but this is, this isn't good. And all the things I talked about, how positive they can be for an off weekend are working against Chase. Like it's the complete opposite effect where now you have to think about all the mistakes you made. You don't get an opportunity to go out and try to fix it right away and to couple that or compound it. I've talked about it many times on this show and others. I think Chase is really susceptible to that type of thought creeping into his mind and just kind of taking hold. Right. Like planning roots. And you just, you have to be so careful with what thoughts you allow to linger in your mind because many times what you think you will become. And I know that's a bunch of psychobabble, blah, blah, I totally get that. But there is some truth in it. If you don't shut out negative thoughts, they will have an effect in reality. You know, you can't just talk down to yourself all the time and then expect that to not matter or not affect your confidence or affect your self belief that you deserve good things. Like, I'm a big believer in that process and it's something I learned the hard way. I'm really hard on myself in all aspects. Racing, you know, broadcasting anything, whatever, whatever walk of life I'm in, you know, my own competence, my own fitness level, my own how I look, how I feel, how, you know, anything. Like it's just my personality. I'm really hard on myself and I have to be careful about how I talk to myself. I don't let people talk down to me, you know, that that's not something I tolerate. But I am my own worst offender because like I tell people all the time, bosses or otherwise, I'm like, don't be worried about my feelings because whatever you're telling me, I promise you I'm telling myself something much harsher. So you're not gonna hurt my feelings. You're not gonna offend Me, if it's the truth, as long as it's the truth and constructive, please, please tell me. And I don't know. I just don't know if Chase is the same way. Everybody's a little different with that. I think Chase lets it. He takes it to heart too much, I think, and it affects him negatively. And there are different. People respond to that type of stuff differently. And I know how I respond to it because I dealt with it for a long time. If I got myself angry enough and I got sick of something, a dynamic enough, I would do something about it. You know, if I wasn't riding well enough, if I wasn't. Didn't make the main event, if I didn't feel educated in an area enough, I wasn't performing any task to the level that I thought was acceptable or satisfactory, I would do something about it. You would just have to get me to a point where I would finally snap and I would do whatever it took to fix that. You know, for lack of a better word, fix. That's not. Vocabulary is lacking there, but how about rectify the situation? That's a little better. I just don't know if Chase is that same way. I think Chase gets down on himself instead of letting it use. Use it as motivation. And everybody. You have to know. You have to know your customer. You know, if you're a coach, if you're Roger Coster, you have to know who you're dealing with and how they respond to those things. Because I personally believe that Chase is a guy that needs positive reinforcement. If you go hard at him and try to piss him off, I don't. I don't know. And I'm speculating here. I don't know Chase well, personally. He's always been incredibly nice to me. I actually really like the guy. But as far as me knowing his personal nuances, I can't say that I know everything about that. I would be lying to you, and I apologize if you can hear that beeping in the background. This car is very loud. But I just. When I see how he responds to just external input, you know, outside influence, it's typically not in a positive way. And, you know, when you look at Daytona and you see him sitting there holding his head in his hands the same way he did in Detroit, holding his head in his hands, that's not really how you want somebody to be dealing. Like, you can see the pain that he's suffering, like the mental anguish. You can. You can see it. So I. This was. This was a tough one. You Know, if he had stayed in second, three seconds back or whatever, I mean, it's not the result he wants, but it wouldn't have been a huge deal. He would have lost a couple more points, but he would have been like, yeah, I mean, whatever. I didn't get the start I needed and Coop rode flawlessly and I just couldn't get to him. But when you make the same mistake again, that's like the one thing you didn't want to do. And I know he's still good on the podium. You know, it wasn't. There's, there's a lot of, there are positives to take away from it. It's just getting to a point now where you've cost yourself swing wise. When you're looking at it on a swing level of how many points he's lost versus how many he's given to Coop, it's like 30. I think it was 24 going into, going into Indy. And so he lost What? He lost two. And he gave Coop two more sets, four. So it'd be 28, I guess. And I'm thinking on the fly here, driving down the road. So if my math is wrong, then, oh, well, assuming. But the point is you're over a full race win worth of points. Like he would have the points lead if he had eliminated all those mistakes. And I'm not saying he had to be perfect. I'm not saying he could eliminate every single mistake that he's made in 2025. That's probably not fair. It's probably not reality. But he would be right in this title fight. He would be battling for the red plate at minimum, and he's just not. And so I'm curious to see how he bounces back. You know, is he able to kind of center himself and come out swinging in Birmingham knowing that we're one half down, one half to go? Yeah, I don't know. I really, you know, I don't, I don't have a strong opinion on it. The talent's there, the equipment's there. He's capable. He's done it before. Like we know all those things. So I'm not counting out, far from it. I'm just more of kind of shoulder shrug about how he's going to deal with all this adversity. And he's the only one that can answer it. You know, he's pretty defiant. He's, you know, he seems like he's a pretty self confident guy, but I would just venture a guess that there's a lot of turmoil Inside his own mind, you know, in quiet moments. He's the only one that knows that, you know, maybe, maybe really close friends have an idea of that. But he knows better than anyone. I just, from the outside looking in, that's kind of what I see is there's just a lot of, a lot of push, pull going on in his own mind and a lot of, you know, every comment that he makes to himself isn't always maybe the most constructive, but I hope the best for him. Again, I genuinely like the guy and I want nothing but, nothing but good things for him. Jacob, he was amazing. Like, that was awesome. That's what you want to see. He was so genuinely happy with his performance and I love to see that because I know he works really hard and he's, he's one of the nice guys in the sport. You know, everybody's pretty cool. There aren't many guys that I would say like, yeah, maybe don't, you know, they always say you never want to meet your heroes. I'm sure that's true, but I don't think there are many guys in our sport that I would be like, yeah, you don't want to talk to him. He sucks. It's pretty rare, you know, J Coop's like on the opposite end of that spectrum. He's as nice as they come. He's really quiet, but he's really down to earth and really nice. And one of those guys where it's easy to cheer for their success because they're not arrogant, they don't take things for granted and it hasn't come easy. They weren't, he wasn't the prodigy his whole life where everything was handed to him. Far from it, you know, I don't think many people even expected him to make it to a factory level coming out of amateurs. I didn't even know who he was. I remember he raced that first race at Unadilla, qualified second. I'm like, wait, what? I'd heard his name before, but not much. It wasn't any hype. He came out swinging right away. So kudos to him on kind of making this, this thing happen. I just, I like, I like to cheer for him. The rest of the guys, I mean, it was kind of quiet. No bar show was better, you know, Jason Anderson, I don't, I don't really know what's going on with him. He's just, just not, it's not working lately. So he's got some soul searching to do, I think on the, on the weekend off. But yeah, certainly the Title fight at the front has, yeah, take it shape. We know kind of what's going to happen now. Kenny's, I think, 26 points back. It's unfortunate, you know, he, he had so much momentum and there were so many, so many positive feelings going around after his Daytona win. But the trouble is, and I'll give Wigant credit on this, he's. He's been on the front end of this kind of take. Is that the trouble with being, you know, he was like 16 down? I don't remember at what point he was, but I just remember that number. The trouble with that is you have no room for error. There's no margin for any more mistakes, none. So it's not like a seventh is the end of the world, but when you're already down 16 or whatever, your rival wins, your second rival gets third and you get seventh, like there's no room for that. Now you're sitting over a full race win worth of points. And that is a devastating situation to be in. And really, Kenny's back's up against the wall now. You know, if you're still thinking championship, you just have to go win. Like, that's, that's it. You know, we still have to face the unanswerable for now. Question of will he maintain his peak performance down the stretch. That's been the topic all along. I keep bringing it up because it's relevant. I don't care. Kenny's been nothing but nice to me my entire life. So certainly I'm not rooting against him, far from it. I try to remain as unbiased as possible. It's just we've had this trend where he has struggled in the second half of any championship he's been in. And that was still going to be a question. Whether he had the red plate going into April or whether he's 20 points down going into April. The question is going to remain. It's just a much more punishing situation. If you can't be your best self down the stretch, if you're going to have any sort of drop off in performance, you're certainly not going to win the championship. And it would be, you know, if you had the lead or it was tied or whatever, going into that scenario, you'd be like, I don't know, this could be the difference. Well, if you go into that scenario 25 points down, or let's say he makes up some points because I think he'll win another race or two, you know, like maybe more before we're said and done, maybe he's 15 down going into April. It's just so difficult if you're not going to be your best self. And I don't have any proof other than history that he's going to struggle a little bit. So we'll see. It's just, it's just going to be on the list until it's not. There's, there's no way around that. And sorry, if you can hear this car and I don't know what's going on with this car. Anyway, let's hope for the best for Kenny. I mean, he does and says the right thing. I think he's one of the most likable riders in the paddock these days. And yeah, it's just, it's really unfortunate that his point situation took such a negative downturn in Indy. The rest of the guys, yeah, whatever. I don't want to talk about him too much. You know, Malcolm's still kind of hanging around the top five finally, you know, kind of got up to where he belongs. Talk about 250 for a second. I think, you know, Hayden missed an opportunity. It's really the starts. You know, I don't think the riding is necessarily a problem. He looked phenomenal all day long. But the starts, the inconsistency in the starts is really hasn't been fixed, you know, because the heat race start was lights out, nailed it. And then the main event got a bad jump. You know, he had the best gate pick. He was exactly where he wanted to be, but the jump wasn't there. And then he was just kind of battling in traffic the first couple laps. And if he's on his best form, he can overcome that. He can move through the pack, he can pass people, he can make up time. But if he's just 1% off that, he's a little bit more susceptible to a bad start. And a podium, there's nothing wrong with a podium. I think everybody, including myself, just holds him in a really high regard. And it's the, you know, it's the upside and the downside of having such high expectation long term is that you're expected to win in the 250 class. And it's not like Jet won every showdown or anything. I don't even know how many showdowns he won. I'm just saying when you are pointed at by everyone as the guy everyone's looking at and saying, yep, that guy's gonna win, he's gonna move to 450 class, he's gonna challenge Jet Chase and whoever that comes with Expectation. And you can say it's not fair. I would actually say it is fair. That's the downside, that's the pressure of huge paychecks and huge contracts. And make no mistake, he's getting, he's gonna get all those. He's gonna get paid. I don't know if top tier money, but a lot. And you know what, what that means is like a 450 contract without gear. You're talking about like 2 million plus. I don't, I'm not saying I'm not guaranteed that's what he's gonna get, but I mean, I feel fairly confident that's what it's gonna be. If he wins this championship and he wins pro motocross, I feel pretty strongly he's gonna get 2 million. You know, like, I think guys like Prado are over two, like closer to three. Kenny's two plus, Tomac's like two million. A little, maybe a little less just because of age, you know, it's hard to get people to invest later in your career. Jets got the biggest deal in history. It's still not announced yet, but he's got, I have it under good authority that he's got the highest contract. I shouldn't say history. That's not, that's not true. Probably not true or fair. Think about Ricky and James and those deals. But he's over 3 million, so how about he's got the highest contract, OEM contract in the sport currently. I think that's, that's fair to say. But the point being, Hayden, you gotta, you gotta win to get those types of things or if you're going to get them, that's what the expectation is going to be. So I, you know, I had an interesting conversation with Brian Deegan after Indy and he kind of talked about, you know, they're getting back to where they thought he should be. You know, the offseason was good. Brian was pretty, I thought, truthful with me saying, like, I still want him to ride east. You know, I think he rides a dirt better. I think he would have done well to have another month or two of prep to get just every single bug worked out. The whoops dialed in and starts better. We could have used that time, but Hayden wanted to go racing and he's like, it's not like we weren't ready, but I want to, I want Hayden to be like wildly over prepared for every situation. And I thought that was really insightful. I thought it was wise of Brian to say that because when I was there at their house, In November, Brian was telling me east coast. He was telling Doug Cabrera, one of our television producers, we're going east coast. And I was like, I even looked at. I told him, like, really, like, I would have almost guaranteed west. And I said it on shows. I think I said it on, I don't even know, a bunch of places. I said, I think Hayden's going west. They're saying east, but I think he's going west. And in the end, I ended up being right. But in hindsight, like talking to Brian now, that was mostly Hayden telling the team and his dad, I want to go race. Like, I don't want to practice for another two months without racing. Like, I'm ready to go. I feel confident. I feel ready. Let's go racing. And, you know, they listened to him. They gave him what he wanted. And I do think he's going to be champion in this class, make no mistake. But I, you know, if you wonder, well, those first few races weren't ideal, you know, like he wasn't winning. It looked like juju was the best guy out west for a while. You know, what was up with that? And Brian was like, yeah, just. I think it was both of the things I said. I think he wasn't 100% ready like I wanted him to be. And I think he's a little better in the ruts, you know, I think you know, best. Definitely better than his competition in the ruts, but just on a relative basis, where does he excel? It's in more traction and ruddier dirt. So I don't know, just a little window into the thought process of Brian. And, you know, I think Brian kind of gets a bad rap from people like, you know, because metal, malicious stuff and you're so aggro and. And I don't think people remember that he was an incredibly good racer way before that. And some people take shots at him because he didn't get a factory ride and he, you know, whatever. There was like a Buzz Creek incident where he cut the traffic. Fine, but forget all that. Like, honestly, forget all that. Because what really matters is kid was I watched him as an amateur. I watched him race 125 supercross outdoors. He was a top 10 guy, top five guy in supercross. He won a damn supercross for crap's sake. He knows what he's talking about. Whether or not you bought into all the nonsense of metal militia, which was an act, you know, he made millions of dollars off of metal militia. So whatever he did was super smart. You know, he Created a character, created a Persona and sold it, sold the brand behind it. Like that's the American dream. So I definitely don't fault him for that, but I was very impressed by his racing acumen when I talked to him. Like, he gets it and he should. He. He lived this life before. So we, we speak the same language with a lot of that stuff. And yeah, so I, I enjoy talking to Brian. Do we agree on everything? Probably not. You know, like, that's normal, though. I agree with everybody on everything, but I do agree with Brian on, on many things. So anyway, you know, the Owls is certainly in this thing on the East Coast. Like, he is kind of finding some momentum here. You know, is he going to win the title? I don't know. Got the red plate now, but it's. It's really anybody's championship on the east. And yes, we'll just kind of. We'll see where it goes from here, but I don't know, just an interesting showdown race, really. Didn't know kind of where things were going to go. Didn't know what was going to happen. You know, I thought RJ did a really good job of fighting back there and getting back to fourth place, salvaging some points, and he sneakily fought himself back into the championship. And so is Seth Hanaker. You know, Hanmaker is one. What did they have bad chicken or something at Detroit? He's one food poisoning episode away from being right in this title fight. You know, he's written really well and Indy was lights out. I mean, make no mistake about it. That was like the best ride of his career. Flawless performance. You know, they. Michael Byrne has done a good job of kind of calming him down. Slowing the scenario down around him is what they were aiming for. And I think they've nailed that. You just watch him. He's not as erratic. He's not making the outlandish mistakes that have him his entire career. And it's really just about being more present and understanding, you know, being very situational in your approach instead of just, you know. And I think Seth has said this, I know he said it privately and I don't think he would be upset about sharing this, but he, in the past, everyone around him basically was just telling him to go as fast as possible all the time. Forget everything else. Just every time you're on the racetrack, go as fast as you humanly possibly can. That was his approach and he said, now there's more method to it. You think about the race, is it the time to take risks or is it time to not. Is there anything to be gained by really pushing here or should I just accept what this race is going to give me and take the points and move on? And that's, that's maturity, that's improving your racecraft. There's, there's a lot of things to be said to that. It's also good guidance, smart people around you telling you the right things and how to be a better racer. So I thought that really showed up in India and good for him anyway. Okay, let's talk mxgp. I've been rambling already for, I don't even know, long time, but it was, it was a disastrous weekend. I'm going to be real honest with you. Weather did not cooperate. You know, the in front and the track crew did. They did everything they possibly could. I hold, I, I give them a ton of credit because it just never really stopped raining. Like every time you're like, okay, we're gonna get some good weather here. The sun's out, track's gonna come around. And it did on Saturday a little bit. We kind of caught a break. Track got pretty decent for the fall qualifying races and then all of a sudden sun goes down, starts raining again. Rained several times on Sunday and it was just, it was just a quagmire. Track was awful, wasn't anybody's fault. They brought in a bunch of new dirt. They did everything I think they could to improve upon the situation that we had last September. But what are you gonna do? It rains, you know, 80% of the time. Time over the course of five days, you're gonna have, you're gonna have a mess. And I wish people could have seen. If you've been on Instagram, follow any of the riders, you would have seen it. But I wish you guys could have seen the paddock, what you know, we call the pits. And MXGP, MotoGP, F1 they call the paddock. It's just water, like just full on slop and standing water. And the shoes, I, I took two pair of shoes. The shoes I designated as my mud shoes. They will now reside in Spain forever. I took them off when I got in the car and I threw them over my shoulder as far as I could. They're in a field somewhere in Spain and I guess I littered, I don't know. But I mean they were never going with me and there were no, there wasn't a trash can within half a mile of where I had to park. So they, they're now forever in Spain. So it's just kind of that Kind of weekend. Everybody you saw was covered in mud. Everywhere you went, covered in mud. Every car covered in mud. You couldn't escape it, you couldn't get away from it. Track, you know, track was the best part of the entire facility and it was mostly because they worked on it non stop. I mean there was literally a piece of equipment on the track at all times if there weren't motorcycles on it. And so I give them, you know, a for effort but they were in a no win situation. And sometimes, sometimes it's just the way she goes. Bad weather. We're in Europe, springtime. I mean, look at our schedule. We have Birmingham outdoors, we have Seattle outdoors. Then where do we go? Boxborough outdoors. New York. No, Philly outdoors. New York outdoors. Pittsburgh outdoors. Denver outdoors. Salt Lake outdoors. Do you know what, like what could possibly happen? Like, I'm not saying it's going to, you know, the dirt work screw has things really dialed. If it doesn't rain within a small window, they're pretty bulletproof. But it could go really sideways down the stretch. So I'm not casting stones or anything like that. It was a, is a pretty miserable weekend. No matter, no matter how you want to slice it. I'm happy I went, happy I'm here, I'm driving to Madrid right now, but it was pretty rough. As for the racing 250 class, you know, just, I don't know, wasn't anything crazy. Liam Everett's dominated. You know, I think Kaido Wolff is just kind of taking his time with things and letting it unfold. I think he's still the guy to beat by a pretty wide margin for the championship and I think he knows that to a certain extent. You know, we're going to get to all these sand races and tracks where he's going to be really difficult to beat and he'll make up a bunch of points on guys and otherwise he's just kind of staying consistent, stay right in the fight. Don't have to win every weekend. You just keep racking up the points. You know, Sasha Kunin completely blew it and that's not, he's just not great in the mud. He's small, shorter than me, you know, and when you can't put your feet down, if you get off kilter, you're gonna crash. So Sasha took a huge hit in the points this weekend. You know, Liam Evers, I don't even know what to say. You know, he wasn't even a certainty to race after his neck injury and he's gone 41 incredible job from him. And he's smashed everyone today. I mean, the second moto, he won by over a minute. Like he killed everybody. It was just a master class performance by, by Liam evers in the 250 class. You know, Langenfelder, he's gonna win GPs. He should have won the opening GP, but I just don't know. Like there's something, there's some sort of disconnect with him and going and being a true championship guy. I don't know what it is. I, I don't know him well enough. I get to know him better now than I ever have because he wears my racing and I'm in situations and working relationships with him now. But just when you watch him ride, you watch his performances, there's just some sort of inconsistency thing that needs to change or to click for him. If it does, it's on. I'm telling you that right now. But as of right now, it's, it's not there. He's gonna win. I'm telling you, he's gonna win. Gps, like stamp it, take it to the bank. I just don't know at the end of, you know, 20 rounds or whatever the number is now if that if he's gonna have the most points. Just. I don't know. I think Kaido Wolf is the clear favorite in that category. 450 class, MXGP class, I should say. Tim Geyser just dominated. I mean, he, he dominated in every sense of the word all weekend long. You know, he got challenged once the entire weekend by Lucas Koonin on Saturday, and then Lucas would promptly crash his brains out. What else can you say? It was his weekend. No one was even really close, you know, in the second moto race, two, as they would say in mxgp, he didn't get a good start and he was sixth halfway through the first lap and he was winning by the end of the first lap. Let that sink in. That's when he needed to step up. That's how dominant he was.6 with half a lap to go, and he was first by the end of that same lap. That's not normal. Like, that is so far above average. And I think if you really needed to do more, you could have. I think he was honestly cruising. You probably never get that out of him. You know, maybe his trusted inner circle or his girlfriend. I don't think he's married yet, but if you ask someone like that, I think maybe they would. He would admit that he's never going to do it publicly because it's too arrogant and just set yourself up for disaster if things don't go well. But I think deep down, I think he was way, way, way back down off of what the maximum was. You know, if Hurlings or Prado or somebody that could really test him had been on their game and there, I think he could have gone a lot faster. When you win by as far as he won by, you're. You're truly not trying all that hard. And I've, I've won amateur races and other big races by, by big gaps and you kind of back down like, you're right, I don't even have to really try, you know, so it, it speaks to what he would have been capable of more than anything for me. And yeah, he's, he's the class of MXGP right now. Like, he is the guy to be. End of story. I, I said it going in. You know, I'll even, I'll share with you. Ricky Carmichael asked me before the season. I think maybe it was after Argentina somewhere, maybe a Saturday of Argentina, you know, what's going to happen in MXGP this season. And I was like, I just don't think anybody can match the consistency and the excellence of Tim Geisker, because Prado could. He's gone. Hurlings possibly could if he was healthy and on all cylinders, which he hasn't been for a long time. But he's missing at least the first two, probably the first three gps. So you look at who's left. February could. He's a former world champion, but you know, you look at days like today, he gives up a ton of points. That's not great. And just Febra hasn't been the Roman fever of old for a while, so it was more questions and answers with him. You know, Lucas Koonin comes in injured, he's a rookie in the MXGP class, he crashes too much, so it's hard for me to think he was going to go beat. And in his prime, all systems go. Tim Geyser. That was hard for me to kind of imagine happening. I don't know who else we really thought was capable. You know, Renault was a huge surprise at the opener, but then a day like today reminds you that he just doesn't have every tool in his toolbox. You know, he's not consistent enough. He's been battling injuries. He certainly wasn't very good in adverse conditions today. And you just go down the list. You know, Coltenhoff's not the guy he used to be. Even though a good team today, he's not a championship guy anymore. I don't know where it would come from. It just doesn't seem like there's anybody that can challenge Tim if Tim does his thing and it's racing. So a crash, an injury, a bike failure, first turn crashes, any of those things can happen. It changed the face of it. I'm just saying, after being here this weekend and assessing the situation with no real bias, Tim Geissner is pretty far ahead of everybody else. And it wouldn't shock me to see him win half the GPS this year. That wouldn't shock me in the least, if not more. I just think. I think if all things are equal, he's going to win most of the time. I watched the first race and my opinion of the first race was he didn't look that comfortable. And he knows that he doesn't have to win every GP to win this title. He just needs to kind of, on his bad days or in the days where things aren't clicking, just kind of hang around the podium, top five, no big deal. Just don't throw away a race overriding, because you're not. It's not all there, you know, because there are going to be plenty of days where it is. Just like today. Like today was not even close. And I think that's going to be kind of the norm. Like, he's going to win a lot. Maybe it's by five seconds, maybe it's by two seconds, maybe it's by 15 seconds. I just think he's going to win a lot of races because he believes he's the best guy. He's going to get good starts, he's on an incredibly good bike and he's been there and done it. It's not complicated. So, anyway, that's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the background noise wasn't too painful. I can't really tell, but, yeah, we're through it now. Anyway, so thanks again. Thanks, everybody for being a part of this thing. Thanks to all the sponsors, Guts Racing Works Connection, TL Speed Shop, Grandstone, Bootsracerentals. Com, Pump Creek Funding, Fly Racing. Thank you to everybody for being a part of this thing. We'll talk to you soon. See you.