2022 Detroit Supercross | Kickstart Recap & Photo Gallery

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CHECK OUT OUR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE 2022 DETROIT SUPERCROSS

Detroit’s inclusion in the 2022 Monster Energy Supercross Championship calendar was much-needed. The Michigan area has a rich history of SX, thanks to the gone but still iconic Silverdome, and the city draws fans from all parts of the Rust Belt. Take our word when we say that Detroit is a low-key good race to make a trip to, especially if you fly with Delta. Ford Field is a very creatively built and well-maintained stadium, with plenty of good seats and a “POWER HOUR” that included deals on beer and food, while neighborhoods around the Motor City offered plenty to get in to for food and entertainment.

TRACK & TERRAIN

The first visit to Ford Field since 2019 didn’t merit a wild track design that paid homage to the Pontiac Silverdome. Instead, riders were presented with a rather basic rectangle layout that included two full-length rhythm lanes, a big set of whoops, a well-made split turn, and a good number of 180 bowl berms.

Compared to Daytona, the Detroit looked like a practice track and invited them to push them pace. Once they put knobbies to the dirt, they quickly found out it had a different feel everywhere, with ruts some places or slick spots in others, and that there was lots of debris mixed into it. Word is the material was sourced from the site of an old factory but wasn’t fully sifted before getting dumped on the floor, which would explain the big slabs of concrete that workers pulled out from the rocks and brick. How there were some animal remains near one turn remains a mystery, though.

Average laps times in the 45-second range meant guys would be hammering through the same sections a lot, and the night’s 250 and 450 feature races were 21 and 27 laps, respectively.

TOMAC

Have you seen Eli’s record in Detroit? The win on Saturday night was his fourth at Ford Field and with his third different bike brand (2015 with Honda, 2017 and 2019 with Kawasaki, 2022 with Yamaha). This was a statement victory for ET3: the forty-second of his career, which puts him fifth on the all-time list in the 450 SX class, and the first rider this year to claim three 450 Main Events. MC’s record of 72 might not be at risk, but given Eli’s late-career rejuvenation and talk of at least one more year with Star Racing, one really has to wonder where he’s going to be on the list when the Bell Helmet gets put on the shelf for good.

As for his riding, things really came together late in the night. Fourth overall in the Timed Qualifying was good, even after one of his best laps in the afternoon got cut short by another rider, and he picked up the Heat Race win when Chase Sexton tossed it away in the whoops. The Main Event was something else entirely. A mediocre start put Tomac deep in the top-ten on the opening lap, but the way he charged into the banked turns, picked up speed midway through the whoops, and passed every noteworthy rider on his way to the lead was one of his most impressive efforts in recent memory.

And yeah, he’s forty-two ahead of Anderson and Stewart with seven races left to go. Remember, anything can happen between now and SLC, something Eli experienced first-hand when he went against Ryan Dungey, so now it’s all on him to see this thing to the end.

STEWART

Malcolm is on the cusp of his first-ever 450 Main Event win. For the second week in a row, Stewart was the fastest rider in Timed Qualifying, won his Heat Race, and went to the gate for the Main Event with a good chance of crossing the finish line at the head of the pack. Things didn’t play out exactly how he hoped, partly due to a poor start, but he overcame that and some mid-race incidents to score a second-place result.

How good is Malcolm riding right now? The lap times are very good, as seen in his Main Event stats (45.163 personal best, 46.747 average), but we were impressed by his on-track awareness. A mistake during a heavy battle with Webb and Barcia forced him to miss the whoops, something he did slowly to appease the officials and to let Webb-Barcia get proper track position, but as soon as he was in the lane, he went back to work and repassed them both within seconds. Also, he was one of the few that made moves by the finish line, as he set up passes in the 90-degree turn before the face, stayed under guys in the air, and completed the move by the exit of the next kink.

Last thing: Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing went through moments with the bike and a staffing change earlier this season, but Stewart seems to be one of the people that helped things move forward, and he has been highly complimentary of their efforts when we’ve talked post-race.

BARCIA

Justin Barcia almost got added to the injured list last week when a practice crash “exploded” the middle finger on his right hand. Seven stitches, some race-day attention by Dr. Feelgood, and a set of handguards later, Barcia was on the podium.

We first assumed the guards on the Troy Lee Designs/Red Bull/GASGAS Factory Racing bike were due to the dirt in Detroit and didn’t hear about the hand injury until after the Main Event, but that says a lot about Barcia’s riding. For a guy who was unsure if he’d race, Barcia ended Timed Qualifying ninth overall, tucked in behind Cooper Webb for a fourth-place finish in 450 Heat Race Two, and was “on it” during the 450 Main Event, especially when Marvin Musquin was on him in the last laps. This was Barcia’s fourth podium of 2022, and despite not yet scoring a win, he’s fourth overall in the championship, down three points to Anderson and Stewart.

What could a mud race do for his season? That’s a fair question, especially with the open-air venues the series will visit in the early weeks of spring.

FACTORY CRASHES & PRIVATEER SUCCESS

Jason Anderson wasn’t just on pace with Eli Tomac; we’d say that he was even stronger in some spots or during certain times than the night’s winner. Their sparring session midway through the 450 Main Event was them at their best, with Tomac hammering and Anderson finessing their way around the fast lines, and it seemed like both had something waiting for the closing stages of the race. Damn shame we didn’t get to see it. A knock to the head and some heavy breaths are the extent of the bodily damage Jason received from the crashes, and he seemed more frustrated by the way things went awry than in pain. He and Monster Energy Kawasaki aim to be on track in Indy.

One can only wonder what made Cooper Webb try to triple, and any reason would make sense, too. In damage control mode from the moment he hit the rear brake in the air until he exited the stadium, Webb brushed off the CRF he took to the back of the head, waved off the medics, and attempted to score points with a few one-handed laps on a mangled 450 SX-F. That’s a commendable effort from the defending champion, even if it proved futile. With no serious damage done to his hand, expect Webb to be at round eleven.

Chase Sexton was at the wrong place at the wrong time and got the worst of it all. On his way through the pack until he showed Webb a fender, he mistakenly landed on the rider moments later and got the spinning rear wheel from his own bike to his back. Instantly bruised and unable to continue, Sexton suffered his second DNF of the season and was credited with a last-place result. Sore, but uninjured, he put in motos at Rattray’s place in Florida and will race at Indianapolis, a city he considers a “home round.”

Recently, Dylan Ferrandis has had a few strange incidents, including a get-off in Detroit that put him between lanes in the Heat Race and the Main Event case that jammed his wrist and forced him to pull off. Unlike the others, Ferrandis will not attempt to race this weekend in Indianapolis.

The carnage allowed guys like Cade Clason, Justin Starling, Ryan Breece, Logan Karnow, and Justin Rodbell to have memorable nights. Detroit is Clason’s home race, and with much of his family in the stands, he scored a career-best tenth place finish. The last few weeks have been rough for Clason, as stalling issues with his bike resulted in some confidence issues, but his HWYW interview shows how much the result meant.

Breece and Starling have both qualified for the majority of the 450 Main Events this year, an impressive feat for the full privateers, and their respective eleventh and twelfth place finishes are career-bests. Starling is twenty-second overall in the championship while Breece is twenty-third, and there’s only three points difference between them. If you need some real race fan excitement late in the season, here it is.

Karnow’s plans for 2022 got changed last week when he and a sponsor had a falling out, the details of why are mum due to involvement from lawyers, so he bought a bike from a dealer on Thursday and drove it to the track on Friday in a Budget rental box truck. What happened next? A career-best result at the Ohio privateer’s home race. Love to see it.

Justin Rodbell told us during track walk that he’d ghost ride his bike “when he finished fourth in the LCQ.” That’s a direct quote. While he didn’t do it for Deegan like he promised, we were pumped to see him finish in fourth in the LCQ and make the gate for his first-ever 450 Main Event. A flat tire kept him from doing the jumps in the final minutes, but he stayed out there for twenty-three laps and eighteenth place.

LAWRENCE

It was another near-perfect day for the teenager. His ability to uncork a fast lap when it’s needed in Timed Qualifying is impressive, and when he does it, it’s considerably quicker than the competition. Press play on HWYW to hear him explain how he gets in the zone and blocks out distractions; it’s a coordinated push, not a lucky fluke.

While we know the AMA’s records for the race season aren’t the greatest and that figures like laps led and holeshots are missing from the Triple Crowns, something in Lawrence’s stat line caught our attention. The 250 Main Events at Minneapolis, Daytona, and Detroit amounted to fifty-five total laps, and Lawrence was the leader fifty-four of those. The only other rider credited with a lap led is Austin Forker, with one.

We noticed two things about his CRF250R this weekend: the data acquisition equipment paired to the bike’s rear-wheel in 2021, something that raised a commotion and that the rider joked were mystery wires, is absent in 2022. Also, the fork lugs appear to be cast, not the expertly-machined pieces that are usually found on a set of Showa sticks.

MCADOO

Once again, we’ve got to point out Cameron McAdoo’s consistency in 2022. A second-place finish, earned after breaking free of a big pack and passing Pierce Brown in the final laps, was his third podium in the 250 East Region and kept him within eight points of Lawrence in the championship. As far as we remember, McAdoo avoided any scary on-track incident in Detroit; there’s no swap in the whoops or wild moment in a rhythm section that comes to mind.

We had a few good talks with the number 48 during the week, including a conversation about working with Nick Wey in the Pre Race News Break and his distaste for most alcohol in How Was Your Weekend.

BROWN

Pierce Brown just keeps building. Fast laps in practice put second overall in the Timed Qualifying results, and he should get some confidence in knowing that his pace is something others are trying to mimic. He carried that into a Heat Race win, was in close pursuit of Lawrence during the Main Event, and crossed the finish line in third place after a late pass by McAdoo. This was Pierce’s top-three of the season, the second of his career, and the TLD team’s second 250-450 podium showing in 2022.

Pierce is currently ranked third overall in the championship, down thirty-one to leader Lawrence. However, he’s the “leader” in a tight points chase that includes Robertson, Lopes, Smith, Hampshire, and Nicoletti, six riders split by just ten points.