Supercross 2023: Results and points after New Jersey

By Apr 23, 2023, 11:03 AM EDT
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On a muddy track in New Jersey after a four-year hiatus from the New York City area, hometown rider Justin Barcia topped the Monster Energy Supercross results for his first win of the 2023 season.

Supercross Results New Jersey
The mud was so deep in New Jersey that Justin Barcia left his bike standing in it. – Feld Motor Sports

Rain was forecast for most of Saturday, but it held off until the features lined up at the gate. The rapidly changing track suited Barcia, who finished third, 15 seconds behind Chase Sexton in his heat, and won by an equal margin over Eli Tomac in the main. Only four riders finished on the lead lap with sizeable margins between each, giving the race a “survival of the fittest” feel.

RESULTS: Click here for full 450 Results; Click here for 250 Results

Tomac’s day could have been much different. In the first qualification session, his hand was ripped from the throttle on a landing and he crashed hard. Limping to the tunnel, there were questions about whether he would be 100 percent at race time. He was less than stellar in his heat, which left those questions unanswered. Tomac finished 16 seconds behind Chase Sexton, which translated to a poor gate pick. That might have been a hinderance in dry conditions, but in deep mud he methodically worked his way through the field.

Ken Roczen led early before Barcia executed a block pass on Lap 6. Tomac caught him several laps later and battling vision problems after shedding his goggles earlier in the race, Roczen laid his bike down in the mud on Lap 13 and fell to third. He held on to that spot to score his second consecutive podium and fourth of the season. Roczen and Barcia entered the round separated by one point in a battle for fourth.

Click here for 450 Heat 1 | Heat 2 | Last Chance Qualifier | Lap Chart

In fourth-place, Sexton was the only other rider to finish on the lead lap. He made up significant ground in the championship battle last week on both Tomac and Cooper Webb and entered the race with a 17-point deficit to the leader. He was positioned to close the distance even more until he was knocked down by a block pass by Barcia. Once he lost track position, Sexton was not able to regain it and the results show he left New Jersey trailing in the Supercross standings by 21 points.

Webb rounded out the top five after getting lapped by Barcia late in the race. Given the conditions, one has the suspicion he was not unhappy about having to circle the track one time fewer than the leaders, but the end result was that he no longer controls his own future. With a 12-point deficit to Tomac, it will not be enough to simply win the final three races. If Tomac consistently finishes second, the most Webb can make up is nine points.

Click here for 450 Overall results | Rider Points | Manufacturer Points

The New Jersey Supercross round was billed as a showdown between Jett and Hunter Lawrence in the first East/West Shootout of 2023, but the mud called the results of the race into question.

Someone is always favored in conditions like this and in New Jersey that was the British rider Max Anstie, who has more experience riding in the wet because of his European racing background. Anstie took the early lead and stretched his advantage in the first two-thirds of the race as the riders behind him cautiously worked their way forward. Anstie’s Achilles Heel was the whoops, which broke down badly in the closing laps.

Click here for 250 West Heat | East Heat | Last Chance Qualifier | Lap Chart

Supercross Results New Jersey
Jett Lawrence congratulated Max Anstie on his first Supercross win. – Feld Motor Sports

In the end, fans got to see the Lawrence brothers finish nose-to-tail, but it was not the race they expected.

Jett found his rhythm late in the race and with Anstie riding cautiously, he closed the distance quickly with time running off the clock. Mud tracks are one-groove affairs and Jett struggled to get enough momentum to pass the leader. Jett could afford to take a few risks, but with his main rival in the 250 West division riding third, he couldn’t take very many and let RJ Hampshire make up ground in the points.

Hampshire had something else in mind. In the final bowl turn of the last lap, he threw his bike in much too hard and slid through Jett. Both riders went to the ground, but they had enough of a margin on fourth that Jett was able to pick his Honda up and salvage second place. As he did so, slewing massively through the mud, he stalled the momentum of Maximus Vohland, which allowed his brother Hunter to nip that rider at the finish line for third.

After finishing second in each of their heats, Jett and Hunter ended the race only one position apart. Now the focus is on the final race of the season when they will get another opportunity to face off in the final East/West Showdown in Salt Lake City.

Hunter had an opportunity to wrap up the championship, but the solid performance by Anstie pushes that off to next week in Nashville.

Click here for 250 Overall results | 250 West Rider Points | 250 East Rider Points | 250 Combined Rider Points

Vohland was consistently good through the round with a third-place finish in the dry conditions of his heat and a fourth-place place result in the mud.

Rounding out the top five at New Jersey was Enzo Lopes with his sixth result of sixth or better in seven Supercross 250 West rounds. A 13th-place finish in the Anaheim 2 Triple Crown hurt Lopes’ championship chances and he is now third in the standings with 58-point deficit to first and 19 behind Hampshire in second.

After his banzai move, Hampshire was buried in the mud so deeply that he could not right his Husqvarna. He was credited as the first rider to finish one lap off the pace in 13th

2023 Results

Round 13: Chase Sexton, Hunter Lawrence win
Round 12: Eli Tomac, Jett Lawrence win
Round 11: Tomac bounces back with sixth win
Round 10: Chace Sexton wins, penalized
Round 9: Ken Roczen wins
Round 8: Tomac wins 7th Daytona
Round 7: Cooper Webb wins second race
Race 6: Tomac, J Lawrence win
Race 5: Webb, H Lawrence win
Race 4: Tomac, H Lawrence win
Race 3: Sexton, Levi Kitchen win
Race 2: Tomac, J Lawrence win
Round 1: Tomac, J Lawrence win

2023 SuperMotocross Power Rankings

Week 13: Justin Barcia leapfrogs the Big Three
Week 12: Eli Tomac gains momentum
Week 11: Cooper Webb, Tomac overtake Chase Sexton
Week 10: Sexton leads with consistency
Week 8: Sexton unseats Tomac
Week 7: Jason Anderson narrowly trails Tomac
Week 6: Perfect Oakland night keeps Tomac first
Week 5: Webb, Sexton close gap
Week 4: Tomac retakes lead
Week 3: Ken Roczen takes the top spot
Week 2: Roczen moves up; Sexton falls
Week 1: Tomac tops 450s; Jett Lawrence 250s

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2023 SuperMotocross Power Rankings after Motocross season opener: Jett Lawrence...

‘It’s gnarly, bro’: IndyCar drivers face new challenge on streets of downtown Detroit

By Jun 2, 2023, 7:32 PM EDT
IndyCar Detroit downtown
James Black/Penske Entertainment
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DETROIT – It was the 1968 motion picture, “Winning” when actress Joanne Woodward asked Paul Newman if he were going to Milwaukee in the days after he won the Indianapolis 500 as driver Frank Capua.

“Everybody goes to Milwaukee after Indianapolis,” Newman responded near the end of the film.

Milwaukee was a mainstay as the race on the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 for decades, but since 2012, the first race after the Indy 500 has been Detroit at Belle Isle Park.

This year, there is a twist.

Instead of IndyCar racing at the Belle Isle State Park, it’s the streets of downtown Detroit on a race course that is quite reminiscent of the old Formula One and CART race course that was used from 1982 to 1991.

Formula One competed in the United States Grand Prix from 1982 to 1988. Beginning in 1989, CART took over the famed street race through 1991. In 1992, the race was moved to Belle Isle, where it was held through last year (with a 2009-2011 hiatus after the Great Recession).

The Penske Corp. is the promoter of this race, and they did a lot of good at Belle Isle, including saving the Scott Fountain, modernizing the Belle Isle Casino, and basically cleaning up the park for Detroit citizens to enjoy.

The race, however, had outgrown the venue. Roger Penske had big ideas to create an even bigger event and moving it back to downtown Detroit benefitted race sponsor Chevrolet. The footprint of the race course goes around General Motors world headquarters in the GM Renaissance Center – the centerpiece building of Detroit’s modernized skyline.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

JOSEF’S FAMILY TIES: Newgarden wins Indy 500 with wisdom of father, wife

Motor City is about to roar with the sound of Chevrolet and Honda engines this weekend as the NTT IndyCar Series is the featured race on the nine-turn, 1.7-mile temporary street course.

It’s perhaps the most unique street course on the IndyCar schedule because of the bumps on the streets and the only split pit lane in the series.

The pit lanes has stalls on opposing sides and four lanes across an unusual rectangular pit area (but still only one entry and exit).

Combine that, with the bumps and the NTT IndyCar Series drivers look forward to a wild ride in Motor City.

“It’s gnarly, bro,” Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward said before posting the fastest time in Friday’s first practice. “It will be very interesting because the closest thing that I can see it being like is Toronto-like surfaces with more of a Long Beach-esque layout.

“There’s less room for error than Long Beach. There’s no curbs. You’ve got walls. I think very unique to this place.

PRACTICE RESULTS: Speeds from the first session

“Then it’s a bit of Nashville built into it. The braking zones look really very bumpy. Certain pavements don’t look bumpy but with how the asphalt and concrete is laid out, there’s undulation with it. So, you can imagine the cars are going to be smashing on every single undulation because we’re going to go through those sections fairly fast, and obviously the cars are pretty low. I don’t know.

“It looks fun, man. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. It’s going to be learning through every single session, not just for drivers and teams but for race control. For everyone.

“Everybody has to go into it knowing not every call is going to be smooth. It’s a tall task to ask from such a demanding racetrack. I think it’ll ask a lot from the race cars as well.”

The track is bumpy, but O’Ward indicated he would be surprised if it is bumper than Nashville. By comparison to Toronto, driving at slow speed is quite smooth, but fast speed is very bumpy.

“This is a mix of Nashville high-speed characteristics and Toronto slow speed in significant areas,” O’Ward said. “I think it’ll be a mix of a lot of street courses we go to, and the layout looks like more space than Nashville, which is really tight from Turn 4 to 8. It looks to be a bit more spacious as a whole track, but it’ll get tight in multiple areas.”

The concept of having four-wide pit stops is something that excites the 24-year-old driver from Monterey, Mexico.

“I think it’s innovation, bro,” O’Ward said. “If it works out, we’ll look like heroes.

“If it doesn’t, we tried.”

Because of the four lanes on pit road, there is a blend line the drivers will have to adhere to. Otherwise, it would be chaos leaving the pits compared to a normal two-lane pit road.

“If it wasn’t there, there’d be guys fighting for real estate where there’s one car that fits, and there’d be cars crashing in pit lane,” O’Ward said. “I get why they did that. It’s the same for everybody. I don’t think there’s a lot of room to play with. That’s the problem.

“But it looks freaking gnarly for sure. Oh my God, that’s going to be crazy.”

Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing believes the best passing areas will be on the long straights because of the bumps in the turns. That is where much of the action will be in terms of gaining or losing a position in the race.

“It will also be really easy to defend in my opinion,” Palou said. “Being a 180-degree corner, you just have to go on the inside and that’s it. There’s going to be passes for sure but its’ going to be risky.

“Turn 1, if someone dives in, you end up in the wall. They’re not going to be able to pass you on the exit, so maybe with the straight being so long you can actually pass before you end up on the braking zone.”

Palou’s teammate, Marcus Ericsson, was at the Honda simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana, before coming to Detroit and said he was shocked by the amount of bumps on the simulator.

Race promoter Bud Denker, the President of Penske Corporation, and Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix President Michael Montri, sent the track crews onto the streets with grinders to smooth out the bumps on the race course several weeks ago.

“They’ve done a decent amount of work, and even doing the track walk, it looked a lot better than what we expected,” Ericsson said. “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. I hope not. That’ll be something to take into account.

“I think the track layout doesn’t look like the most fun. Maybe not the most challenging. But I love these types of tracks with rules everywhere. It’s a big challenge, and you have to build up to it. That’s the types of tracks that I love to drive. It’s a very much Marcus Ericsson type of track. I like it.”

Scott Dixon, who was second fastest in the opening session, has competed on many new street circuits throughout his legendary racing career. The six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion for Chip Ganassi Racing likes the track layout, even with the unusual pit lane.

“I don’t think that’s going to be something that catches on where every track becomes a double barrel,” Dixon said. “It’s new and interesting.

“As far as pit exit, I think Toronto exit is worse with how the wall sticks out. I think in both lanes, you’ve got enough lead time to make it and most guys will make a good decision.”

It wasn’t until shortly after 3 p.m. ET on Friday that the IndyCar drivers began the extended 90-minute practice session to try out the race course for the first time in real life.

As expected, there were several sketchy moments, but no major crashes during the first session despite 19 local yellow flags for incidents and two red flags.

Rookie Agustin Canapino had to cut his practice short after some damage to his No. 78 Dallara-Chevrolet, but he was among many who emerged mostly unscathed from scrapes with the wall.

“It was honestly less carnage than I expected,” said Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who was third fastest in the practice after coming off his first career IndyCar victory in the most recent street race at Long Beach in April. “I think a lot of people went off in the runoffs, but no one actually hit the wall (too hard), which actually surprised me. Hats off to them for keeping it clean, including myself.

“It was quite a bit less grip than I think everyone expected. Maybe a little bit more bumpy down into Turn 3 than everyone expected. But overall they did a good job between the two manufacturers. I’m sure everyone had pretty much the same we were able to base everything off of. We felt pretty close to maximum right away.”

Most of the preparation for this event was done either on the General Motors Simulator in Huntersville, North Carolina, or the Honda Performance Development simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana.

“Now, we have simulators that can scan the track, so we have done plenty of laps already,” Power told NBC Sports. “They have ground and resurfaced a lot of the track, so it should be smoother.

“But nothing beats real-world experience. It’s going to be a learning experience in the first session.”

As a Team Penske driver, Power and his teammates were consulted about the progress and layout of the Detroit street course. They were shown what was possible with the streets that were available.

“We gave some input back after we were on the similar what might be ground and things like that,” Power said.

Racing on the streets of Belle Isle was a fairly pleasant experience for the fans and corporate sponsor that compete in the race.

But the vibe at the new location gives this a “big event” feel.

“The atmosphere is a lot better,” Power said. “The location, the accessibility for the fans, the crowd that will be here, it’s much easier. I think it will be a much better event.

“It feels like a Long Beach, only in a much bigger city. That is what street course racing is all about.”

Because the track promoter is also the team owner, Power and teammates Scott McLaughlin and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden will have a very busy weekend on the track, and with sponsor and personal appearances.

“That’s what pays the bills and allows us to do this,” Power said.

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500