Qualification Day at Motocross of Nations

What of the results, though? Well, they’re a big misleading because Spain won Saturday with a MXGP moto win from Prado and a Open class second from Rubin Fernandez. But that’s team’s trouble will come in MX2, where Oliver Oroil only finished tenth. They get to throw that score away, so the 1-2 finishes for Prado and Fernandez made Spain number-one today. But watch for Team France, good as always, which logged a third in MXGP from Febvre, a third in Open from Maxime Renaux, and a MX2 win for Tom Vialle. Remove the drop score, and France was the best team today.

The Netherlands’ squad was fast, but Jeffrey Herlings crashed early in the MXGP moto, and his teammate Kay de Wolfe crashed and went off the track in his race. So that made their results look worse than they should. Then there’s the Australians, which have Jett and Hunter Lawrence but need Kyle Webster to do his job in MX2. Hunter was third in MXGP most of the way until a last crash dropped him to fourth behind Febvre. Jett won the Open moto ahead of Fernandez. But Webster crashed in MX2 after getting a great start, then later crashed again. From about last he came through for 13^th, an impressive charge, but he has to avoid the mistakes tomorrow.

Now, what about Team USA? It was a solid day but in the end the result says ninth overall. Not ideal. With the 24^th gate pick (drawn at random) starts were an issue for Eli Tomac (MXGP) and Aaron Plessinger (Open). Cooper Webb somehow nearly nailed the holeshot with the bad gate, but didn’t have the pace, straight up, in MX2 and slid back to eighth. Plessinger took seventh after winning a duel with Netherlands’ Glenn Coldenhoff. The lone real bright spot was Tomac, who, after the bad start, logged about three laps of Beast Mode fury to catch Herlings and get the crowd fired up. Tomac was the fastest bike on the track at that point, but that charge was only brief, and his lap times went back up, and he finished seventh.

Bottom line, Team USA will need to be better tomorrow to contend. Of course they probably have the most room to grow considering the other teams know this track better than they do, but can they make up this kind of ground overnight? The atmosphere at the team truck still seemed relaxed on Saturday, and the team is working and communicating together in ways Team USA hasn't in quite some time. No one seemed to panic. Tomorrow is all that matters.