DAYTONA BEACH, Florida - Dylan Ferrandis was schedule to return to the Monster Energy Supercross series at Daytona International Speedway after missing three races while he waited to clear concussion protocol following a violent crash in Houston with four of 17 rounds in the books. Another heavy crash on Media Day, (see tweet below), will force him to miss at least one more race as he is not “not feeling 100% after yesterday’s crash,” according to the Star Racing Yamaha team.
Injuries in the Supercross series in 2022 stymied his results and with the SX title out of reach, he chose to skip the final four races of 2022 to focus on Motocross. That was a luxury he had before the two series unified to create a playoff style format of three races at the end of year called the SuperMotocross World Championship. Ferrandis was also injured in the outdoor series and set his sight on 2023.
“Every season is a reset,” Ferrandis told NBC Sports ahead of the opening round. “You start the first race with everybody at the same point, nobody has a point in the championship so everybody’s on the same page. So, for sure it’s a reset, but you also learn from the past season. I plan on not doing the same mistake and I want be better and the new Yamaha bike is a big step up for me and I’m sure it’s going to help me a lot to be better this season.”
The first three races of the season went remarkably well.
Ferrandis finished sixth or better in each race and was sixth in the standings, trailing Jason Anderson and the top five by a single point. Then came Houston, where the race was red flagged after Ferrandis landed on the back of Ken Roczen’s bike and hit the ground face first.
Ferrandis missed his first race the following week in Tampa.
“I was at my peak,” Ferrandis told NBC Sports as he waited to take return to the track for a second session around portions of the Daytona International Speedway infield Supercross track. “I lost a lot of physical strength and confidence, but we will see. Supercross is a short season, but now we have this SMX so we will see how it goes.”
Accidents are a regular part of Supercross and Ferrandis had another hard crash during Media Day.
Massive crash for Dylan Ferrandis during media day today 😳
— Supercross LIVE! (@SupercrossLIVE) March 3, 2023
(via @RacerXOnline)#SupercrossLIVE #SuperMotocross pic.twitter.com/G2uAANtpB8
The original report was that Ferrandis would be okay to race, but after riding practice, he made the decision to stay off the bike one more night.
The creation of the SuperMotocross Series means Ferrandis still has two shots to win a title in 2023.
And as good as Ferrandis is in Supercross, he is arguably better in the outdoor series after beating Eli Tomac for the 2021 title by 73 points, which is a gap of almost three full races.
Even with the four missing Supercross races this season and his next-to-last finish in Houston, Ferrandis sits 15th in the points’ standings entering Daytona, 30 points above the rider 20th in the standings. At the end of the Pro Motocross season in August, the SMX series will guarantee starts to riders who are in the top 20 in combined points.
“It’s good to be back, especially here at Daytona,” Ferrandis said. “It’s such a great race.”