Dominant Weekend for Team Honda HRC at Pro Motocross Opener
he stars aligned on the week/weekend of the Pro Motocross opener for the Wiseco-backed Factory Honda HRC team.As the Pro Motocross series is commemerating their 50th season running, Honda Racing coincendentally happened to be celebrating their 50th anniversary in motocross as well, meaning they’ve been there since the beginning. Earlier in the week, Honda unveiled their 2023 CRF performance family, which includes a retro-themed anniversary edition sporting the classic Honda look – gold rims and a blue seat. Keeping to the theme, the entire Honda HRC crew (including mechanics, riders, crew memebers and all) showed up to the 2022 Pro Motocross kick-off at Fox Raceway in Pala, CA sporting a complete retro team look.
Including their 250 and 450 class riders, the class had quite literally a perfect performance across the board. They did not only get the P1 and P2 overall positions in both classes, but the respective riders went 1-1 and 2-2 in each of their motos – not an easy feat considering the talent lined up next them across the 40-man gate. As the official release from Honda Racing stated, “For much of the day, the teammates were each other’s only real rivals at the Pala, California, track, but in the end it was Chase Sexton and Jett Lawrence winning the two classes to take early points leads, while Ken Roczen and Hunter Lawrence each notched a pair of impressive second-place results.”
Honda’s race news release continues, “The Red Riders enjoyed strong starts in their motos, with Sexton and Roczen trading holeshots in 450 and Jett Lawrence second early on in both 250 races. Hunter Lawrence had the most overtaking work to do, including a moto 2 charge from seventh to second, highlighted by a dramatic last-lap pass on Jo Shimoda that kept the team’s impeccable results tally intact. Sexton had to make passes on Roczen in both 450 motos, whereas Jett ran relatively comfortably at the front in the 250 races. Both Sexton and Jett had relatively narrow winning margins over their teammates (averaging 10.3 seconds and 6.1 seconds, respectively), whereas in the 450 motos, the gaps from Roczen to the first non-Honda riders averaged a notable 32.0 seconds!”
In its fifth consecutive year working with Team Honda HRC for Supercross and Motocross, Wiseco is proud to play a role in maintaining reliable power through piston development for the CRF450R race machines of Ken Roczen and Chase Sexton, as well as keeping the CRF250R machines of the Lawrence brothers cool in the long outdoor moto conditions with CV4 radiator hoses from Wiseco.
Honda concluded thoughts on this legendary race weekend better than anyone – ” For anyone who witnessed the exhibition, it had the makings of motocross lore that will likely be recounted for another 50 years.”
Check out the official Honda release here.
