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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, Works Connection raceredos.com unmatched supplements, firepower parts, Grandstone boots and fly racing.

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Welcome to the Industry Seating podcast. My name is Jason Thomas. It is March 29th Sunday. Getting this out on a Sunday, very excited about it and we just watched the Detroit round and I'm going to be honest, it took me a second to remember where I was just last night. This is a pretty common occurrence for me. I don't know if it happens other people I should ask that is when you get on these, you know, travel week after week after week. If you kind of forget what city you're in day after day like you just like where were we? You remember the racing but it's like what city, what venue. They all start to run, run together a little bit. But it was a great night of racing. We're going to get into all of that. I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, guts racing gutsracing.com thank you to them Works Connection. They are dominating things. They have they, they really went on a run at that showdown in Birmingham again they win the race in the the 250 class for sure with Cole Davies using that pro launch start device. Congratulations to to him and thank you to Works Connection. Go to at Works Connection on Instagram. See all the great products they have. Race- rentals.com have a little side story for, for that part of the the podcast. Jason Cobb and his team were down at the at a race in Baja recently and things went a little sideways. Not so much for them but other people that are industry related to our sport. And yeah, just wanna say a thank you to Jason and race-rentals.com for looking out for some of our own unmatched supplements and Nova Prime Labs check them out. Go to unmatched sups s u p p s.com to see all the supplements they have. And Nova Prime Labs is a brand new company, it's a sister company of unmatched supplements and they're gonna have all sorts of things related to the, the peptide industry and that's going to be a game changing concept they have going on over there. If you don't know anything about peptides, you probably will whether you want to or not in the future because they are really taking over the health space and what's possible. I kind of consider it the wild wild west and like the newest frontier of wellness and kind of biohacking. There's a lot of, a lot of great things coming out of that space. So keep an eye on that. And yeah, congratulations on the launch of Nova Prime Labs Grandstone boots. Go to grantstoneshoes.com firepower parts fly racing. Thank you to all of them. Now let's do this damn thing now. The 250 class. And, and by the way, this podcast is going to be a little bit short, but I wanted to get it out quickly for some of you and I, I kind of say that a lot and then it ends up being along. But I'm going to try to keep this to, you know, 20, 30 minutes. Cole Davies water ride. That was simply incredible from that kid. And just, you know, like following along with Cole Davies over the last few years, I was just really kind of wrong with Davies because when I was watching him in Futures, as it were, and then that became SMX next, I wasn't over the moon about what I saw. I mean, it was, it was impressive to a point. He was winning the Futures Races and that deserves a lot of credit. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to discount that, but, but I'm always looking at what is the ceiling? Is this guy going to go on and be something truly special when races and, and, you know, 250, 450 titles, that type of thing. And I didn't really see it. I, I didn't. And I don't know if that's just on me for not seeing it or if he took this gigantic quantum leap forward that was really hard to kind of suss out. And there, there were people that had big claims for him, so maybe, maybe they just saw it during the week because I just. At the races, he was getting the job done. But it was more like kind of what I saw with Drew Adams, like, really good. A great rider. You don't win those races without being a great rider. But what I'm seeing from Cole Davies now is, is something else entirely. The way he was hitting those whoops is not. That's not common. And I've talked to, like, Will Christian a lot about this because Will really, like, she likes to learn. She wants to be better at her job. She wants to understand the ins and outs more than she does. And she's been around for a minute, like she gets it. But nuanced stuff, if you haven't raced, is always going to be like the hardest thing to grasp. Because it's nuanced, it's not always apparent. You know, the, the obvious Stuff, everybody sees it. And that's not really. I, I don't believe that's necessarily what my job is, is to point that stuff out. Everybody can see that. It's the little things that add up to a lot, you know. Why is Cole Davies so much better in the Whoops? How is he so much better in the Whoops? Even. Even if it's hard to pinpoint walking through, why it's so difficult to do that and why it's so punitive if you get it wrong. Like all the guys crashing, Dudney and Cody, Shock and I mean, how many. Hunter Lawrence, how many people did we see have huge crashes in the Whoops? That's what makes what Cole Davey was doing so incredibly impressive. It's that it's the not really caring about the penalty. Or maybe he, he does care and it's just like, no, I'm. That's not going to happen to me because I have skill, a skill level above that that's going to propel me past the point where I'm gonna have that crash. Because he really wasn't having big moments. Yes, he got a little bit of that, if you heard me talking about on the broadcast, like that side to side swap thing going on a little bit. Yes, he did. But for the most part it was pretty good, you know, like, and he was going much faster, which is crazy because things are happening as it, you know, obvious as it sounds much quicker, much faster. And if things go wrong, they're gonna go wrong much more quickly. So I, I was wildly impressed. And that's kind of where I've been so on the front end of Davies. Like the ceiling for Cole Davies is simply a different thing than a lot of other people that I'm watching. And, and I've gotten pushback from lots of different places. Publicly, privately, people being like, you know, like, why are you saying that? Like, he's, he's not, he's bar. You know, like, he barely is winning the opening round. He didn't win. I'm like, I get it. Listen, I'm not saying he's the next coming of, you know, the Messiah. I'm just saying he can do things that really good writers cannot. That's it. That, that's as simply as I can put it. And when you see that for someone who's been doing this their whole life, and this is what they've built their life around, is being able to identify and try to aptly explain these things, that's, that's really what I, I love doing It. It's what I want to do. When you see it, you have to be brave enough and willing to call it out because it doesn't come along all that often. And that's what I've been seeing with Davies. Like, this whoop. Skill set is uncommon, and it doesn't. It's not going to always matter, you know, and that's. That's the difficult part is a race like Birmingham where the whoops aren't that big of a deal, and he's kind of. It's hard to say he's average when he gets the official win, and really, he was the second best guy, but he wasn't even able to wield his sword, which is the whoops. That's. That is the difference. When you can't. When you can't use your best strength on a racetrack, it. It opens the door for everybody to be like, yeah, it's not. He's not that great. Until you get to a racetrack like Detroit where it's so apparent and everybody's just like, oh, all right. And, you know, like, then I'm like, see, that's. That's what I'm saying. And I'm not. It's not about me being right. It's just. That's why. That's the. Why I'm so adamant about certain things when I see it is because in the right moment, there's going to come a time where he's going to be able to go to a completely different place than everybody else because he possesses this skill set. And. And that's really it. So great job, Cole Davies. You know, the last thing I'll say is, you know, he talked about early in the season. We had a Zoom call with him on Friday as well, where, you know, we get. We get our chance to ask some questions, things that are, you know, like, off. I don't want to say off the record, per se, because we could certainly use it, but he doesn't have the world watching him. He's in his hotel room relaxed. It's just a different environment. So we can maybe get. Maybe get him to open up to us a little bit instead of just like a podium interview where we have no time. You know, we have one question or maybe two that we can ask him, and that's it. So, yeah, like, I. My question to him was kind of like, man, you. You really seemed kind of serious and. And great, grumpy to. For lack of a better term, this year. And I don't think that's necessarily you. Deep down, I'VE just noticed that really changed this year. It wasn't like it was always this way. So that's all we know and that's all we should expect. And that's just who you are. It went from really kind of light hearted to really not at all. And he's like, yeah, it's, you know, some of its expectation that I put on myself and also I haven't been riding very well. Like it's. And that made a lot of sense to me because he's like, it's, it's hard. These are his words. You know, it's hard to be happy when you're not happy with your riding. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's very logical. So thank you for, thank you for giving me that insight because that makes a ton of sense. You know, if it's just the expectation part, I would say maybe give yourself a little bit of a break because you're doing so, so damn well. This is year two and you've got, you know, this was before last night, but he had two wins already. Now he's got three. But him saying, I haven't liked how I was riding and that's, it's hard for me to kind of let that go and just be like, oh yeah, everything's great when it's not great. I, I can relate to that. I, I fully get that. So good job. Cole Davies, Seth Hammaker. I mean, not a lot to talk about. It was okay, but he, I, like, I kind of take. Took away. He finally did anything positive at Detroit because after the heat you're just like, oh boy, here we go again. And I think he was good enough to be in the fight to win the race outside of the whoops. The whoops were not like the whoops are going to preclude him from being anywhere near Davies. That it's, it's that simple. But I thought he was fine everywhere else. You know, like he's, he's riding really well. He's still in this thing. I think he's what, nine points out of the championship. That's not a huge deal. But what I would say is that when he gets a race like Birmingham where the, the whoops aren't the predominant factor in the race, he's going to have to win, you know, like a Daytona Arlington. They were gnarly. Just, they, I think they all caught a break with, with Davies crashing in the first corner. But these other races, he's going to have to go win if the track is a little bit easier. Where do we go St. Louis? I don't know. St. Louis, whoops are typically not like, really gnarly. If they're not, he needs to win. Like, otherwise you're going to be in situations where Davies is going to. He's going to use that skill again, and that's going to discount any chance you have moving forward. Joe. You know, I, I kind of. I was really taken aback with Joe early on, like that Arlington race. I was like, how, how is he doing this? How is he so good with so little riding time? It did not compute in my brain at all. It didn't make sense. I couldn't wrap my head around it. This makes more sense. And, and I don't. I'm not saying, like, why was right. That's. That's not it. But when I watch him ride now and he's a little off, he doesn't have the intensity, he doesn't have the top end speed. He's making small mistakes. That is super indicative of not enough riding in the off season. So I don't know if, if it's just like a delayed effect, I really don't have an explanation for it at all. But logically this makes more sense. What I'm seeing is just like he just doesn't have that extra 1% and that extra 1%. Your peak, your best self. That only comes out when you've gone through this rigorous boot camp process of all the work and all the time and all the preparation because the mental and the physical and the metabolic and all those things all come together that allow you to be your best. That's just how the process works. And when you don't have that and you haven't gone through all of that, it's really hard to be your best self. So this, like, you know, like whether he's flat, which, when you're flat, you have like no intensity. You're just kind of going through the motions, which is what Joe looked like. That is really, really common when you haven't had enough riding time or haven't just been able to do your whole program because you had a broken neck, you know, like, what do you expect? So this just, in my brain, this, this makes a lot more sense. The, the Joe that we've seen the last couple weeks. Devin, that Devin Simonson, Cody Shock thing, I don't know that I've ever seen anything like that. That was unbelievable and terrifying and incredible all at the same time. The fact that we did not have a huge crash because of that somewhere is unbelievable. Honestly, it's unbelievable. Like I, I, I'm so thankful that it wasn't much worse because logically the, the percentage chance it should have gone a lot worse than it did. So good grief guys, calm down a little bit. The last Note on the 250s I had was yeah, just great job Henry Miller. That was, that was really cool to see. And you could like, if you want to be a detractor you could say, well you know, there are people crashing and chaos everywhere, whatever, I don't care. Like that's how results go, man. Like you have to take advantage of the situation when opportunity arises. You have to be willing to go take advantage of it. And, and Henry Miller did it. Evan Fairy did it. A bunch of these guys did it. I'm not going to take, I'm not going to take away from that. Like they don't get to control who crashes and who doesn't and who shows up and who doesn't. Like that's, that's our out of their control. There are plenty of times where the racing is brutally hard, like a showdown and the odds are stacked against them. Sorry. I keep getting something I throw. So when it goes their way and they have an opportunity, I'm not gonna take away from them. Just like I'm not gonna hammer on them when they don't do well when everything's so difficult. So good job. All the guys that got a great finish in Detroit, like Henry Miller. Henry Miller will never forget that moment. He'll never forget that ride. He, it just those things stick with you. I can speak from first hand experience those types of nights. You won't remember every single detail. But he'll remember a lot of it. He will remember a lot of it. He'll remember how he felt leaving that night and the satisfaction and the joy and the, the podium. You know, the interview on after the race he got to do all that stuff is that those are life, you know, kind of forever memories. So I was happy for him. Let's jump into the, let's quickly jump right into the power rankings and the top is going to be a little weird because it was a weird night but I'm just going to touch on how I saw it and where they still are. Number 10 is Justin Hill. And, and we talked about, I don't know if it was on this show or other shows but I, Justin Hill, it's been brewing like this type of finish has been brewing for Justin Hill. You see him pop up on the board in qualifying. You see him having better like speed. So it Wasn't shocking to see Justin Hill getting better and now he's a week in, week out power rankings guy and it's never been a talent thing. I think he kind of came in unprepared. I don't know this, I'm purely speculating, but he looked like he wasn't all that ready when he came into the season and I don't know that to be true. He lives in Wyoming now. I don't know how much time he spent in California. I don't know where he was riding. I don't know. Like I can tell you, Wyoming weather in the winter is not great. So like December, if he was at home, I can't imagine he was getting all that much riding in. So anyway, it's just what it looked like because he has gotten better and better and better and better, which would make me think he wasn't riding a lot or how about enough? He wasn't riding enough before the season and I don't know that to be true. I'm just guessing. Number nine was Joey Sachin. Welcome back, sir. That guy is, he's a great rider, man. Joey's a really, really good rider. And you know, like in a different world he would, you know, like if more guys were hurt and it was a different situation and we didn't have all the international riders like Prado and all these guys here, Ferrandus, he would be on a factory team. He, he would. But it's a true international series these days and factory spots are not easy to come by. So I think Joey makes a lot of money between World Supercross and international, you know, Australian stuff and racing here. I don't feel sorry for him, but I, you know, like the way he rides sometimes I, you know, I wish you I had a factory bike because I think he is deserving of it. Number eight is Malcolm Stewart. Great job, Malcolm. And I almost put him higher up. I probably should put him higher up. You know, the podium is great and he's gotten better and better. So he's on. He's one that was likely to move forward. But you're going to see why I didn't when I named these other guys because Malcolm's podium was awesome. But like Jorge Prado, if he doesn't get taken out by Webb, like, I don't know, you know, maybe Malcolm beats him. But Prado's been really good and Prado's been really good like most of the year. So I have Prado there and I think Prado's gonna be way ahead of Malcolm Outdoors. So it's kind, there's kind of a lot of variables going on in this but I, I could understand if you're like, Malcolm should be ahead. Like that's fine, you know, based on the podium. All right. I'm not going to fight it to the end, but I do feel confident the Prado especially moving forward over the next months, Prado is going to be ahead of Malcolm in the, in this list, number six is Justin Cooper. And not a bad, not a bad gig for Justin. 4th on the night. Decent result. Pass Dy Tomac was really fast earlier in the day. You know, the whoops are still a problem. Like he was jumping through the whoops and when everybody was blitzing early, he was kind of having to kind of back out of that. We talked about it a little bit in the heat race. It's still a liability, but he's a great rider. Like I, I, both things can be true. He can be a great rider and the whoops can be a liability. And that's just the world Justin Cooper lives in right now. And I don't think that's ever going to change. I don't, I think Justin Cooper is, is who we are gonna get. Number five and welcome back. Similar to Joey Savachi is Chase Sexton. Second place wins the heat race. And I know he wasn't thrilled with how he was riding, how the bike was working after qualifying, but to not be thrilled with how things are going and still get, get the heat win and get a second place finish, like, man, I can't be too upset. So it was a positive sign. I don't think everything's like all clear on the home front, you know what I mean? I do not think that's, that's where they are. Like, I don't think everything's cleared up and Sexton's happy and everybody's stoked to Cowie and all things are healed. Like I, I don't believe that to be true. But he's racing, he's on the podium and you just take the small wins where you can get a man. Just, just take what you can get for now and try to keep moving forward. Number four is Cooper Webb. And I mean, you know, one mistake, one ill timed pass, I'm not going to, not going to do anything drastic with Webb here. But if you go back and think about trying to think what race it was, maybe Seattle, I don't remember. No, because Prado didn't race Seattle. It was Arlington possibly. Gosh, they're all running together. At this point, wait, Prado didn't race Arlington? What was the race? Was it Glendale? I apologize. I'm all over the place. There was a race. Point being where Cooper Webb said, I cannot wait on Jorge Prado anymore. I cannot be patient. I can't wait on him. He will hold everybody up. That moment, that comment is what was the catalyst for him to go so aggressively in on Prado in that moment in the main event. That was it. If you're looking for why to do that, it goes all the way back to then where he's like, I can't wait on him. I cannot wait. If the door's open, I gotta go now. He got it wrong. And honestly, it wasn't even that poorly executed, other than Prado was really caught by surprise and then kind of fell down onto him. And I'm not saying this was Prado's fault at all. I'm just saying the way the physics of it worked. Cooper went in really hard, really aggressively. It surprised Jorge big time. And then, like, he kind of fell down onto where Webb was. Now, Webb, you could argue Webb shouldn't have been there. That's okay. But I know Webb's aggressiveness was coming from the fact that he was terrified of getting stuck behind Prado because Prado, nobody wants to be stuck there. He, like all the riders say he cross jumps them and he blocks them, and he can really disrupt your forward progress. So I think Webb was hyper aggressive in that moment, and it cost him. It certainly costs Prado, but it costs Web two. You know, instead of he got sixth, maybe he gets third. I don't know. I don't know what he gets in the main event, but I can tell you it would have been better than sixth. I. I'm very confident in that. So, yeah, I have Webb in four. That was a mistake. But he's going for broke right now. Like, he. He has really nothing to lose anymore. And I think you're gonna see him, like, like on the aggressive side of things, moving forward. Right or wrong? Right or wrong. I just think that's what we're gonna get. Number three is Ken Rockon. And what a performance, man, that was. That was a vintage Kenny ride. And it wasn't like he just ran off and won by 30 seconds. It wasn't that. It was just get to the front early, which he's a specialist at. And then he just managed the race. And it wasn't. He didn't have the whoops, like, overly dialed in. Like, he was actually jumping the whoops at the end of the race. But he really, if you go back over the last few weeks, Indy was the same thing. Houston was the same thing. Last week in Birmingham was the same thing. He just wasn't able to get a better start. He came from 18th to almost catch Hunter. So it's been there. This isn't like a wild change to what we've seen. This was just more execution on every metric. Get a decent start, get to the front early, make no mistakes and also utilize that incredible pace he's had and you just haven't. He just hasn't been able to make the most of the speed that he's had. That that's probably as apt. Way as I can put it is he's had this pace. He's been capable of this for weeks. He just needed all the other details to fall in place. And it did. And it did. And great job, Kenny. It's fun to watch him win. You know, he's, he was, he's always kind of been a fan favorite. But the likability factor for everybody I think has gone up over the years and it's due to the big injury. It's due to, you know, the, the family aspect and he's, he has so much charisma. So yeah, it's, it's easy, it's easy to cheer for Ken Rockon. Number two, Eli Tomac. And there was some back and forth amongst a few people I was talking with last night about what's going on with. With Ey and one person's opinion was like, no, it's just, you know, he's just not feeling it. We've seen this from Eli and I'm like, okay, like I, that's fine. You can think that I, I don't, I don't know, but I am more of the opinion that like something's up. There's something up last week and this week because the reason I feel that way is early in the season he had so much intensity. Like when I watch him ride, he looked like he was trying to break his motorcycle. Like he was trying to snap his throttle off the handlebars. He was twisting the throttle so hard. When I watch him now, he looks really tentative. He looks really hesitant. He's kind of just riding around at times. And my. This was a point of contention also. I said there's just no way a fully good to go. Eli Tomac is just moving over for Justin Cooper when the championship is at stake. That was such a big moment. Championship wise, points wise, you got to capitalize every Possible point. You can. When Hunter is down and out like that, and to just move over for Justin Cooper. No, no. Like, just hard. No, you would never do that unless you kind of don't have a choice. And if. If it's just like he's not feeling it and the bike's not quite right, and that is why you don't have a choice. I mean, I guess I can go along with it, but I don't necessarily believe it. I think there's something else happening. I don't. I don't know what that is. An injury. Like they're dealing with some sort of bike problem. I don't know. I. I don't know what it attributed to. So I don't claim to have the answers, but I do think there is something afoot that they're not telling us. That that's. And that's. I could be totally wrong. I could be absolutely way off the mark. And they're like, no, you're just. You're seeing something that's not there. I just haven't been very good the last couple weeks. That could be the case. I'm not, like, completely oblivious to that being possible. It's just when I watch him, he does not look right. He doesn't look right. He. He qualified 10th in the second session. He was really not even a factor in the race at all. At any point in the heat. In the main. In qualifying, he was not a factor in Detroit, period. In the main event in Birmingham, he got beat by like 38 seconds. Okay. And I kind of gave him a mulligan because I really thought he just backed off. I don't know anymore. I. I don't. I just simply don't know. So this is more of. I'm posing a question that I'm trying to give an answer, but I really think there's a strong chance that something is up. Something might be up with the number three. And time will tell. We'll get. Either it'll be now or it'll be a month from now. It'll be after this championship's over. We'll get answers. We'll. We'll get to the bottom of it. It'll come out. He'll do an interview. They'll talk about it at some point. I just. I don't know when that'll be. But usually, usually you get to the bottom of it. Eventually you'll hear like, oh, yeah, he had a. He had a sprained knee and didn't want to talk about who. Who knows, right? Like, his back he's been at the chiropractor every day for weeks. And he could, like, it tightens up in the main event or who knows? Who knows? But that. That type of thing, it feels like what I see. And we'll see. I could be again, I could be wrong. I'm wrong a lot. I'm fine with being wrong, but I am posing the question because that's what it feels like. Number one is Hunter Lawrence. And that was. That was a tough main event for Hunter, obviously. Man, that crash, as a racer, that crash is so tough because it was fine until it wasn't. And it went sideways so fast on him. Like, it was. Everything was like, okay, if you're watching it kind of in slow motion, it's like, yeah, no big deal. No big deal. Little off, but no big deal. And then from zero to a hundred, it goes sideways and wrong, and then he's just, like, swatted to the ground. And he. He very easily could have gotten injured in that crash. Like, so easy. Like, the. The way he hit with that much force. Shoulder, ribs, like, arm, wrists, any. Any of those things could have been injured in a crash like that so easily. And thankfully, he wasn't injured. I would say the odds of an injury were over 50% in a crash like that. And he got up and he didn't really do much because he crashed again. But he's healthy. Ish. Going forward. So you have to be. Sometimes you have to be thankful that you got away with one there. But it was damn punitive in the points. Like, that was that hurt. He went from, like, all the momentum. Like, think about if he doesn't crash there and it gets even if he gets third, that pushes Eli to sixth. Now you're. What's that? 20 points to fit. So it's 14 now in the championship, and Eli's looking the way Eli looks. That's a big deal. And yeah, okay, the points would have come down from, you know, Kenny. He would have taken five back from Hunter. It's still like 20ish, like high, mid-20s, whatever, you know, like, it's not that changing. Like, Kenny would have gotten a lot of credit, but Hunter still feels like he's in control now. Everything's wide open. Eli's in charge. But I don't know that Eli. Eli's right. Like, if he told me Eli got fifth again in St. Louis, I'd be like, okay. Like, that's the way he looks. He does not look good. And now Hunter's on the back foot, both momentum wise. We don't know where he is health wise and Kenny has all the momentum in the world. So it is a whole new ball game in the 450 class. And I'm going to tell you right now, if Kenny Rockson ever wants to win a 450 supercross championship, this is. I don't know that he'll get a better shot than this. And he doesn't even have a great shot. He's like 14 down, 15 down. I don't know the number. But this, this is an opportunity. The way he's riding, the momentum he has. He's got to get on a win streak here. Eli doesn't look great. Hunter's now in the back foot. Ken Rockon has to go on a winning streak here if he wants to be champ and I don't know if he can or can't. I'm just telling you he's got a second lease on life here, not real life. You know what I'm saying? He's got a second lease on life in this championship and he's got to make the most of it while these other guys are reeling from whatever they're going to be dealing with for the next few weeks. And if he can, the door's open. It is, it is game on. But I'm not excited Hunter crash, like that sucks. I'm not excited that Eli doesn't look good, but I am excited that we have a completely different wrinkle and a completely different look for this championship. So that's going to be a lot of fun to see how this all plays out. Thank you again to the sponsors, Guts racing works connection, race-rentals.com I want to touch on that. So some of our Monster Energy Girl family, they race side by sides. Also they were in a horrific accident. Their side by side burned to the ground and they needed a lot of help. And Jason Cobb and Race Dash Rentals were on site helping get them out of the car and help them get into a helicopter. I don't know all of the details but I do know he was involved and was helping. So thank you to him. Good Samaritan, great person, great company. So check out race-rentals.com again. Works connection. Guts Racing unmatched supplements. Nova Prime Labs is just getting off the ground. Grantstone Boots, Firepower Parts and Fire Racing. Thank you to all of them. Thank you everybody for listening. Happy to get this out on a Sunday. I hope you enjoyed the racing. It has been chaos defined and I can't imagine why St. Louis would be any different.