Hello drama - Monster Energy Supercross Atlanta Race Recap

That was wild. Round 9 of the 2020 Monster Energy Supercross season delivered the drama in the preier 450SX Class. Almost everywhere you looked on the track, you could find the drama and the tension.

To this point, the 250SX Class has delivered the drama, especially in the west coast division, less so with the east coast division, so the premier class decided it was their turn to deliver the drama.

Beginning with the winner of the night, Team Honda HRC’s Ken Roczen. Roczen was out the gates and into the lead on lap one and never looked back on his way to a dominating win, his third overall win of the season. The three wins this season are particularly noteworthy because the wins come after three winless seasons for the 25-year-old racer. Injuries and slow returns now seem to be behind him and he’s in a great spot to win his first Monster Energy Supercross title.

Next was the red plate leader coming into the race. After qualifying first overall on the day, Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Eli Tomac looked primed to charge into the front and carry the red plate into Daytona during Bike Week this upcoming weekend. Tomac was finally riding strong early in the season and keeping the mental errors to a minimum. WAS being the operative word.

Tomac got lost in the start shuffle and found himself deep in the back off the pack. As he started to work his way to the front, Tomac got into bike scuffles with Justin Barcia and Blake Baggett. The scuffle with Baggett was 100% Tomac’s fault and it caused both riders to go down. In previous years, it was in these moments where Tomac would find himself struggling to get himself mentally together, but something is different with Tomac mentally this year. He pulled himself together and fought back to forth place. In doing so, he still holds onto the red plate jointly with Ken Roczen.

There are other contenders waiting to gain ground should Roczen or Tomac slip up or have a bad night – a very common occurrence with all the variables that go into a Supercross race. Defending champion Red Bull KTM’s Cooper Webb gutted out a heroic third-place ride after a week of rehab and pain management to recover from a brutal crash the previous weekend. Webb was clearly in pain after the race on the podium – but he was on the podium.

Monster Energy Yamaha Factory Racing’s Justin Barcia, the winner of the opening round in January, seems to be faster than ever. Plagued with bad starts lately, the 27-year-old racer emerged from the first corner in fifteenth place. He got to work immediately pressuring, scrapping, and passing the best racers in the world; in 20 minutes on the race clock plus one additional lap, Barcia got around thirteen riders – some of them more than once and under no friendly terms – to finish in second place. 

Four riders, on four teams, riding four different motorcycle brands, each with their own unique style of riding and racing – all within a single race’s points of each other, and two dead even after nine rounds of racing. As the 2020 season is in the second half of the season, the intensity on the track will certainly increase. The series continues with round ten this Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway for the 50^th anniversary of Supercross racing in Daytona Beach, Fla.