Page 52 - GRIT-82

CHASE SEXTON
250 MX / 8TH
IMAGE / LANG WORDS / HARNISHFEGER DESIGN / MOTOPLAYGROUND
>> Chase Sexton’s rst full season as a professional can be chalked up as a success at this point in the year. The Geico Honda rider enjoyed a great 250SX West Coast Championship campaign. He would end up nishing fth in the points standings and would rack up three podium nishes including a second-place performance in Seattle. His speed was something that caught peoples’ eyes as he frequently had strong charges from the back of the pack and impressive qualifying times. So far outdoors, he has enjoyed a solid season, but poor starts have prevented it from being better. He has fought from behind in a majority of the motos, but he nally broke through and captured his rst career podium overall nish at Muddy Creek last week. Fresh off that rst career podium, Sexton carried that right into Southwick in the morn- ing qualifying practice sessions. The Illinois native went out and notched the fourth fastest lap time in the class. He knew a good start would be all he needed to return to the podium for a second straight week. Sexton nailed that good start in the rst moto of the day. He came out in fourth place after lap one. He quickly lost a spot to his old amateur rival, Austin Forkner, but he quickly made up for it by passing Jimmy Decotis on lap three to get back into fourth. From there he began applying the pressure to rookie, Justin Cooper. He shadowed him for several laps before they both ran into problems. Cooper crashed pretty hard right in front of Sexton
on lap eight leaving Sexton nowhere to go. He got hung up with him and would end up losing a spot to Plessinger. He returned to his rhythm rather quickly and passed Shane McElrath to return to fourth on lap eleven. He looked poised to remain there all the way to the nish, but Dylan Ferrandis charged around him with just three laps to go. Sexton would slip back to fth and would nish there as well. It was a solid moto despite his run-in with Cooper and he’d look to get another top ve in moto two. Sexton started moto two in the worst way possible; On the ground. He was seen fumbling around trying to remount his machine in the rst corner, so it looked like he would start way behind the eld. But somehow after nally remounting, Sexton would pass an enormous number of riders before securing the green ag. He had moved all the way to twenty- rst in one lap! He kept this unbelievable charge going and found himself
all the way in twelfth by lap ve. He was passing riders at an obscene rate but just as he was about to enter the top ten, he’d go down. He crashed on lap six and fell back to sixteenth. He’d move up to thirteenth around the halfway point but during the second half of the moto, he’d suffer from another big mistake and would nurse his machine home in fourteenth place. It was an all-around brutal moto for Sexton. Temperatures were soaring and the amount of sand he ate while coming through the pack was probably insane. He’d nish the day eighth overall with 5-14 moto scores.
52 GRITMOTO • JULY 1, 2018