At the last race of the 2017 Monster Energy Supercross season in Las Vegas, Monster Energy / Pro Circuit / Kawasaki’s Adam Cianciarulo shed a huge monkey off his back with his first main event win since his rookie season back in 2014, and you could see he was looking to carry that momentum into the 2018 Western Regional 250SX Championship. With the amateur #92 that he wore to more Loretta Lynn’s amateur championships than any rider in history finally on his factory Kawasaki as his permanent professional number, he immediately looked right at home on the new Angel Stadium dirt.

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Right out of the gate, AC was the fastest in free practice, fastest in the first timed qualifying and fastest right up until the last lap of the final qualifying session. The returning champ, JGRMX / Suzuki’s Justin Hill recorded the fastest lap on the last lap of qualifying and ended up pushing AC back to second, but the #92 set the early pace for the seriously talent-saturated 250SX West.

In the heat races, Adam got a decent start, but despite setting the fastest lap time again, he was paced behind TLD / KTM’s Shane McElrath and Star Racing / Yamaha’s Aaron Plessinger for the entire race, and that would end up being the theme of his entire night show. In the main, AC got another good start, but after tangling with a little overzealous Phil Nicoletti, he had to work his way up to AP while McElrath again got the holeshot and checked out. There were times when AC looked like he had the pace to get by AP and go after McElrath, but he once again crossed the line in third–not the win the #92 wanted, but solid points to take into round two in Houston.

If he can get his starts dialed, I’m not sure anyone can beat him.

After the race, we caught up with AC and talked about his 2018 debut in Anaheim.

Adam solid podium tonight with a third. Not a bad start to the season.

Yeah, no, it’s a good start to the season. For me, first time racing west coast, first time racing A1, a lot of hype on this race always as everybody knows, a lot of energy. Terrible start for me, but physically I felt really good in that race. I was able to come through and make some quick passes. I felt really good on the track. The track was challenging. The obstacles weren’t necessarily too technical, but because of that, we were charging everything so hard and being so aggressive everywhere. It was definitely a really intense 16 minutes there. That aspect of it was difficult. I was kind of bummed; I got arm pump with like six or seven laps to go. I thought I had more in the tank. I started doing my best lap times right there.

 

I’ve never heard you talk about arm pump before.

Yeah, no, I never have arm pump. I’ve never gotten it in my life. I think it was just the energy and the nervousness of A1 maybe, so we’ll get that all sorted out for Houston and come out swinging, but great spot to leave Anaheim.

 

It looked like you felt good on this track right away today. You were fastest in the first free practice session, the first qualifying session and were on top of the board for most of the final session before finishing with the second fastest time. What was it about this track?

I like being fastest in practice. It sets the whole day up for me. I feel like I come out, I’m really good at learning the track pretty quickly and getting it down, and I really like getting those time sheets back and looking at myself ahead of everybody else. It makes me happy. I don’t like being slower than anybody or even just worse than anybody at anything to be honest. I want to be faster than the 450s; that’s my goal always when I go out there is to try to be faster than those guys. I doesn’t always work out like that. I think I got the track down pretty quick, but at the same time, everybody was pretty close today. We have a good six or seven guys who could possibly win a race this season. So like I said, we’re just happy to get a nice solid day under our belt. We got all the laps in, everything we need to do and we have a good idea of where we’re at.

I think we are going to see a lot of AC on the podium in ’18.

Early in the main you looked like you had the speed to go after McElrath, and then you kind of got held up behind Plessinger. Did you feel like you broke your momentum a little bit behind Plessinger?

Um, yeah, so I caught Plessinger there in the middle. I was doing my best laps. I think my mechanic told me, I could be wrong, but my mechanic told me that I was going faster than both of them. I got behind Plessinger and then I got really screwed up with lappers. I missed the quad. Really screwed me up through the whoops before the finish line and then I lost a toe there. I think I just got a little bit shaken up and that’s when I started to pump up. Like I said, that was kind of a bummer because I was looking at Shane the whole time and of course the goal is always to win so I was always pushing. And then at a certain point it’s like maybe we’ll just play it safe and coast in from here.

 

What do you think about the depth of this class in the west? It’s pretty insane.

Yeah, it’s pretty good, isn’t it? You know, you have Justin Hill, defending champion. I think they said there’s five race winners coming into the season.

 

And Hill was back there battling hard for like 6th, 7th and 8th.

Exactly. Even rookies like Chase Sexton are really fast. Christian Craig, he’s got a lot of raw speed, a lot of talent. Of course my teammate, Joey, and Shane of course was on it. He seems like he’s always on it these first couple rounds of west coast the last few years. His starts were just dialed and he just sprinted away right away. He knew exactly what he needed to do. Man, that’s the way to win it for sure.

 

Did Shane surprise you with what he did?

No, he didn’t surprise me. That’s his whole M.O. to get a good start like that. Once he gets a good start like that and sprints away in the beginning, that’s how he wins. Not that he can’t win another way, but that’s his M.O. It was a good night to do that, to get up front and not have to worry about anything. He did it in the heat race and in the main, so props to him.

While we often never know what numbers these riders were as amateurs, AC’s #92 was the most media covered number in amateur mx history.

You feel good with #92?

Oh yeah, it’s nice to have the #92 back.

 

It looks natural. Thanks for talking to us.

Yeah, no problem.

Photos by: Ryne Swanberg | Garth Milan

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