At the 2021 Indianapolis 2 SX, we saw an insane crash from Mitchell Oldenberg in his heat race. The Muc-Off Honda rider’s bike locked up on the face of a jump and he was forced to eject and jump over the bars in midair for a spectacular crash. I’m more surprised that we are not writing an injury update on Mitchell today than I am about what ended up happening, but I digress.
With Mitchell’s Honda locking up and the AMA rules only allowing riders to race the exact same bike that was put through tech inspection early in the day, the Muc-Off team was forced into a motor swap fire drill situation. The whole team turned their hats around and pulled together to get the motor swapped before LCQ while Mitchell went to the line without a bike and tried to relax.
The team got the job done and rolled the bike to the line before the gate dropped for the LCQ, but that relief and excitement was short-lived as an AMA official pulled him off the gate with the accusation that the team had changed the bike, not the motor. After arguing in vain over what turned out to be a misunderstanding, the LCQ gate dropped without Mitchell.
While all that was already strange enough to witness from the outside looking in, it got even more strange when after not racing the LCQ and qualifying for the main, we saw Mitchell and the #49 Honda pull up to the gate for the main event. Rather than go into any more detail, we’ll let Mitchel—who was bombarded with questions from SX fans on social media—explain the whole situation from his perspective to you in the video below.
Photo from: Muc-Off / Honda Instagram
