After struggling in the first three 450SX main events in 2017, Monster Energy / Kawasaki’s Eli Tomac has bounced back with three main event wins in the last four Monster Energy Supercross main events. Not only has he won, he simply dominated those three main events. The only problem, it was three steps forward and one huge step backwards for the #3. In the one main event of the last four that Eli didn’t win, a bike problem sent Eli home from Arlington with 15th place points. So despite winning three of the last four, Eli still trails Red Bull / KTM’s Ryan Dungey by 24 points.
In Minneapolis last weekend, Eli was on his own level. The Kawasaki rider was fastest in both qualifying sessions and qualified a full second faster than the second fastest rider. Eli had to come from behind in his heat race to qualify for the main event second, but he was again the fastest rider in both 450SX heat races.
In the main event, Eli got off to a top five start and moved around Rocky Mountain ATV / WPS / KTM’s Davi Millsaps for the lead on lap three. From there, it was all Eli. He sprinted off to a six-second gap over Dungey—who moved into 2nd on lap three as well—and he maintained that until the checkered flag. Eli went on to complete 26 laps and, astonishingly, lapped the seventh place rider. It was another display of dominance by the Colorado native, but with Dungey finishing third behind Red Bull / KTM’s Marvin Musquin, Tomac still has a large 24-point mountain to climb in the points.
After the race was over, Eli sat down in the press conference to answer some questions for MotoXAddicts’ Chase Yocom and the rest of the SX press.
Eli, three [wins] out of four. I want to ask, when you have a big lead, your feet are still coming off the pegs and you’re still charging. Do you maintain your focus to keep that pressure on yourself. To keep pressing to eliminate mistakes? Why don’t you back off when you have a big lead?
Well, I can’t back off when I have these two guys sitting next to me. This was by far I think on par with Oakland for being one of the tougher tracks of the year, because of the shorter lap times. We did whatever it was—twenty-four, twenty-five laps—so there was a lot of going around there. Lappers were tough, like those guys said. It was kind of just a night of survival, for sure.
It looked like a difficult track out there. What was the most difficult part for you?
For me, my closest call was in the sand section. And then in a few of the corners we were getting down to that plywood again. There was more than one spot, for sure.
We’ve been expecting East Coast tracks to be soft and technical. This is the most hard-pack track we’ve had this year so far, it seems. Were you surprised at all with your setup? Did you think coming in you needed to set up for an East Coast track and now it’s more like a West Coast track?
Yeah, it was just a combo of hard-pack and that soft dirt, so we had both situations.
When you’re leading like you were and you’re coming up on lappers and stuff, besides the blue flags can you do anything? Can you rev your engine or can you yell? Or is there anything you can do to get the lapped rider out of your way?
You really can’t. You just have to hope he’s not sitting right in the main line there or the line that gets you the good triple in a rhythm section or something. But there were a lot of spots tonight where you had to follow. The only thing I had going for me is I went through those guys and the guys behind me had to go through them also. It was pretty tough for sure, getting by those guys.
You had a challenging week last week in Arlington. How was it to come back and regroup and be on the podium again this week. Do you take that going forward now too?
Yeah, you hope to get back to this step when you have a bad weekend. All you can do is fight on and do it again the next week. There’s seventeen rounds and it’s not over until it’s over.
Photos by: Ryne Swanberg
