That’s a wrap on the 2025 Monster Energy AMA Supercross after the Salt Lake City round. A crazy night in Utah for sure when it comes to the Dave Coombs Sr. East/West showdown and lots to talk about regarding the series.
First, I’d like to implore the powers that be that, whenever the contract to hold the last round of SX in SLC is up, they should move the race somewhere else. I like SLC; it definitely needs to hold a round of supercross, but just not the finale. Please. Let’s go to Vegas or Dallas or Glendale or…almost anywhere else (not Dallas Speedway though, please). No hate comments on Salt Lake City, but the dirt, the atmosphere, the fact we’re doing it during the day isn’t ideal, the track’s short, and yeah, I’m over it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Well, Cooper Webb did what he had to do in order to join just six other riders in the history of the sport to win three 450SX supercross titles. He got a great start, rode the laps, and rode into history as well. I don’t have all the stats in front of me; stay tuned for more on that later this week, but to me, this was the “fastest” Webb has looked in his three titles. He was on top of the board a lot, he won heats, he blitzed the whoops better, and yeah man, he just looked…faster.
He's got a bad thumb ligament that he made me swear to keep a bit on the down-low, and it’s probably going to need surgery at some point. So once again, Webb might miss some or most of the outdoors. The SMX point seeding is very important to these guys, so he might hang out in 450MX for a bit before getting fixed. His buddy Phil says (he didn’t talk to Coop) that he thinks Coop will race six rounds, then get fixed.
So, as I said, he joins six other racers to win more than two titles, and if you’re asking me to rank them, I’d go:
- Jeremy McGrath (72 wins)
- Ryan Villopoto (41 wins)
- Ricky Carmichael (48 wins)
- Cooper Webb (30 wins)
- Ryan Dungey (34 wins)
- Jeff Stanton (19 wins)
- Bob Hannah (27 wins)
As good as Webb looked—and he did—Chase Sexton absolutely “lost” this title with some mistakes. Seven wins for Sexton puts him up high on the “most wins in a season but did not win the title” list (but not as high as you might think looking at this chart, and also, poor ET). His Dallas Triple Crown last-lap mistake stands out as a major loss of points, but hitting the gate in Detroit, his late race crash, and subsequent falling apart after that (Barcia got him last turn for a point) and probably others will leave him awake at night.
We all expect Sexton to take his talents to Kawasaki next year, so it’ll be interesting to see if the multi-race mistakes he’s made with Honda and now KTM can be stopped. Sexton rides the momentum hard, both good and bad, and if he wants to dominate this series—which he fully can—he needs to stop the bad nights.
Justin Cooper finally passed Cooper Webb! It was late in the 450SX main event, and he felt confident that his buddy had the title, so he went ahead and got his third podium in a row and secured third in the points. Great way to end the year, and also, he can now say he passed Cooper Webb, so congrats on that.
Well, Tom Vialle is your 250SX champion for the second year in a row! The Frenchman pulled out a second somewhat unexpected SX title with just one win on the year and nutty circumstances to pull it off. He looked in control in SLC with a great start and really rode by himself in second, then in third. But then he sort of folded when Seth Hammaker got up to him; Seth and RJ Hampshire passed Vialle, and I was shocked at how fast they dropped him. The dream of a second title was over for Tom. But then, like Hulk Hogan getting off the mat, he got a second crack at life and won the whole enchilada.
Rather remarkable really, he “Tim Ferry’d” his way to the title (with one win compared to Ferry’s 0) in that he was clearly not the fastest guy in the class, but injuries to Levi Kitchen and Max Anstie, some bad chicken (Hammaker in Detroit), many, many crashes (RJ Hampshire), and Vialle’s the champ!
Also, in case you were wondering, here are stats for least amount of wins to win a 250SX title as well as where Tom's three career wins rank him amongst other two-time 250SX champions. Hey, the checks cashed! Thanks to MX Reference for these stats.
Having said that, his ride in Pittsburgh where he won was great. He crashed hard in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in practice (Pitt) and in the heat (Philly) and still rose back up to the occasion.
Tom has to move up to 450s (two titles in a row) now, and uhhhh, I’m not sure about this, and I’m sure that KTM’s Ian Harrison isn’t sure either. Maybe there’ll be some sort of rule change from the AMA, but either way, KTM is going to have to really pay more for a rider that, in my opinion, probably needs more time to move up.
Vialle joins Mickael Pichon, Christophe Pourcel, and Dylan Ferrandis as two-time 250SX champions from France, ICYWW.
I thought Hampshire rode great to come up from the 18th gate pick to move up that fast on Hammaker. We all saw his move on Seth, and we’ve all argued about it. JT thought it was fine; all RJ needed to do was knock Seth down and stay upright himself, hoping Seth takes a while to pick up his bike or hoping he can pass someone else because finishing one spot ahead of Seth wasn’t enough.
Spoiler alert: he didn’t do it. I don’t know, man; any time you need some convoluted bunch of things to happen to win a title and one of them involves knocking down (and possibly hurting) your competitor and then having to go apologize to the team owner of said rider, I don’t like it. I have a ton of respect for RJ Hampshire, but in this instance, “Rick” came out, and like the Incredible Hulk, you don’t want to see “Rick” when he’s angry.
If you want to say, ‘hey man, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake,” then I would say to you, why not do this all year long? Just be a wrecking ball and see what happens? Also, you know who had MORE money and prestige at stake and didn’t really do anything but had many chances at it? Chase Sexton.
Again, I get the other side to this, but to me, I didn’t like it. Hampshire should’ve passed Seth straight up and hoped for the best.
Also, none of the Rick stuff would’ve happened to Hammaker if Vialle’s teammate, Julien Beaumer, hadn’t slowed down (seems like on purpose) and interfered with Hammaker. He passed Seth back and slammed him, he slowed down and stalled out the Kawasaki rider’s progress, and really, Vialle should pay Beaumer some percentage of his title bonus. Julien Beaumer was the ultimate soldier for KTM in all of this.
Poor Seth Hammaker; you can say he was the best rider in this series (he was to me), and you can say he’ll get the title next year or whatever, but you never know what can happen in this sport. This might be Seth’s only chance at ever winning the title. I’m sure people said that about Casey Johnson or Marty Davalos or so many other guys that seemed so close to winning the whole thing. Seth got screwed; he needed to be a bit smarter out there for sure, but in the end, poor Seth. He’s my 2025 250SX East Coast champion. I’m gonna make bumper stickers for him.
Also, poor Mitch Payton! He last won a 250SX title in 2017 with Justin Hill, and it seems like he just can’t catch a break after being the dominant team for so long. Since the 2010 season, he’s had team tactics cost him this year, he had a rider in the points lead break a chain with one race to go (Davalos), he’s had a rider get stuck in Canada and miss a race (Dean Wilson), he’s had riders get hurt with the points lead (Blake Baggett, Austin Forkner, and Adam Cianciarulo), he’s had a rider going to win the title before a late race crash (Cianciarulo) or a two-turns-to-go takeout (Joey Savatgy), and he’s had the two red plate holders take each other out in a showdown (Cameron McAdoo and Levi Kitchen), and I probably forgot two or three things. It’s unbelievable at this point.
We all know Haiden Deegan cinched the 250SX West series last week with a somewhat controversial move on his teammate, so this week, there was no pressure on Deegs to do anything. And I guess, with the pressure off, that was a good thing because he holeshot the main event and took off in a dominating win, which might be his best supercross race ever? He was quadding out after the finish line with ease (plenty of top 450 guys weren’t doing it), the whoops have never been a strong point, but he aced those all night and basically cruised to the win some seven to ten seconds ahead of the chaos. Like I said, great race, maybe the best one of his career, and going into 250MX, where he’s the heavy favorite to repeat, everything is rolling for the #38 right now.
Shoutout to Chiz for ending his 450SX career (as a full-time rider anyway; we ALL think we’ll see Chiz at a SX here or there) with one of his better rides of the year. It was his second-best finish of the season, so like, whatever, but he rode well. I watched him a few times, and he was battling Noren for a while before Fast Freddie pulled away. Closer to the top ten than he’s been really. Congrats on a great career, Chiz, and I’d like to take credit for the “Chiz chizzed me” and all the other “Chizzing” sayings. We came up with that on the review pod, and it stuck.
Also, by the way, Noren also finished one spot ahead of Adam Cianciarulo in his last 450SX race as well. Freddie Noren does not care about your legacy!
The AMA has been a lot better at being more like a “real” sanctioning body/rule maker in the last few years, but they went back to “never change” AMA this weekend when they decided that there was no Rookie of the Year in the 450SX class because the guy that should’ve won it, Mitchell Oldenburg, had too many races in 450SX before this year, his first as a full-time racer. Freckle had something like 15 or 16 races coming in, but I mean, they gave it to a thirty-year-old a couple of years ago in Alex Martin. I dunno, man; there’s no rule in the book on how many races is too many to get the ROY award. Just give him the trophy; nobody cares, man, this was his first year as a full-time guy in the class. Poor Mitchell.
Thanks for reading OBS from SLC. Next time you read this, it will be about the great outdoors! Email me if you want to chat about this race or anything else at matthes@racerxonline.com.
