The opening round of Supercross every year is filled with excitement for most and anxiety for some. Come the second week in January, it’s been a couple of months off for the athletes from racing, and they have spent the last four to six weeks in their boot camps getting ready for the season. They arrive in Anaheim full of confidence and motivation to get a fast and good start to the season, and while you don’t win a championship in round one you can certainly loose one if things go badly.
This year the first race delivered a full truckload of surprises and stories. We saw Chase Sexton on the Kawasaki for the first time in a race, and while he did not have great results in the main, he did show a glimpse of what he is capable by grabbing the fastest qualifier in the 450SX class. Jorge Prado was back on KTM and the world was curious if he would continue his poor showing from 2025 or return to his MXGP form and success. He was a respectable sixth in qualifying and then shocked everyone with a win in his heat race and followed it up with a third in the 450 Main Event. This would be his first heat win and first podium in his Supercross career, and it would be his seventh overall Supercross race.
Eli Tomac made his debut on the KTM bike. He was the second fastest in qualifying and grabbed the win in the 450SX Main Event. He started in third place and quickly moved into the lead, and led every lap of the race to his first win on the new bike. He finished second in his heat race behind Prado for an excellent night for Tomac and the Red Bull KTM Team. In other new we saw Jason Anderson grab a fifth-place finish in the Main Event, Ferrandis finished ninth, giving the new Red Bull Ducati team their first top 10 finish in Supercross, and Austin Forkner rode the Triumph 450 for its Supercross debut to a fifteenth-place finish.
450 Class
The 450SMX Class Main Event was forced to restart when a red flag brought the race to a halt on the opening lap after a multi-rider incident. When the gate dropped for the second time, Tomac positioned himself right behind his Red Bull KTM Factory Racing teammate Jorge Prado and seized control of the lead on the opening lap. Once out front, Tomac easily gapped the field while Progressive Insurance ECSTAR Suzuki’s Ken Roczen made an impressive charge into contention after rounding the first turn deep in the top 10. The German veteran made multiple passes to slot himself just outside the top three and eventually worked his way around Honda HRC Progressive’s Hunter Lawrence for third before making the pass on Prado for second. Roczen closed to within a couple seconds of Tomac and kept him honest throughout the 20 Minute + 1 Lap race but never got close enough to mount a challenge.
Tomac took his second Anaheim 1 victory by a margin of 1.4 seconds over Roczen, while Prado leveraged the holeshot into the single-best-performance of the Spaniard’s U.S. racing career and his maiden Supercross podium in his seventh start. Following the race, Prado’s KTM failed the post-race sound inspection, which resulted in a penalty from the AMA of three championship points. Prado retained his third-place finish.
Lawrence earned his best Anaheim 1 result in fourth as he came out on top of a race-long battle with Twisted Tea Suzuki Presented by Progressive rider Jason Anderson, who finished fifth. Defending 450SMX Class Champion Cooper Webb endured through an up and down Main Event to finish seventh, just ahead of last season’s championship runner-up Chase Sexton, who went down and went off track multiple times in his debut for Monster Energy Kawasaki.
With the win, Tomac has established a three-point lead over Roczen in the 450SMX Class standings, with Prado in third, five points behind his teammate.
250 Class
The first race of the Western Divisional 250SMX Class was historic as England’s Max Anstie became the oldest winner in the history of the smaller displacement at 32 years, 8 months, and 16 days of age. The Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing rider brought confidence into the Main Event after winning his Heat Race and took advantage of a start inside the top five to quickly move into the top three. Anstie continued to move forward and took his time to take second place from Honda HRC Progressive’s Chance Hymas before tracking down Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing’s Ryder DiFrancesco for the race lead with a little more than seven minutes and one lap to go. Once out front, Anstie was able to sprint away from the field to capture his fourth career SMX victory by a margin of 7.5 seconds.
Hymas was able to make a late pass on DiFrancesco to earn a runner-up finish in his first start since suffering a torn ACL last June, while DiFrancesco parlayed the Main Event holeshot into the first podium result of his career in his 13th Supercross start.
After a dominant Heat Race performance, defending Western Divisional 250SMX Champion Haiden Deegan was never a factor in the Main Event. The Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing rider started outside the top 10 but made an impressive climb through the field to narrowly miss out on the podium in fourth.
Anstie now holds a three-point lead over Hymas in the Western Divisional 250SMX Class, while DiFrancesco sits five points out of the lead and Deegan seven points behind his teammate.
