Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but Premium users receive great benefits. Premium benefits include:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
yeah you’re right he isn’t up to speed except when he went last to first at hangtown 🙄
do we forget the simplest explanation? no matter what bike or what rider, someone is going to win the race(s). all this bullshit down in the details is a waste of time. everyone's great, everyone has a great bike. what do you want, equal finishes at each moto? someone has to win. we don't need to over analyze why someone is second. this shit's been happening since Roman times and well before.
Same thing happened to Reed he had to face James and Ricky their whole career, just bad timing
Chase is probably the rider I've rooted for the most over the past few years, but the simply truth is that he has a slightly lower natural "ceiling" than Jett does. I don't think it's how hard he works, his character, the bike, or anything else. I just think that Jett (and Jett's the only one, at least in the AMA series) has a tiny increment more natural talent that allows him to beat Chase without having to ride over his head generally. If it wasn't for Jett, Chase would be the guy.
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
exactly. Chase is BADASS. can he win? YES. will he win? I believe so. but old_can-am is correct.
Pretty sure that at Thunder Valley Chase said they didn’t change anything from Hangtown, or words to that effect, so they must have been happy with it.
In racing mental Confidence is king.
Last year Jett had it in undeniable abundance. Right now due to injury Jett is at his lowest point so if anyone is going to strike they better do it now to further put a dent in his confidence level.
You cant buy it sell it or modify it. Things have to click then it comes naturally.
I would say with complete honesty, and this is gonna get me roasted but Chase is the highest quality rider KTM has had since Dunge. It will take some time for Chase and his team to correct the wrongs the KTM group has made in their latest generation of motorcycle. They will get there and they will be competitive with the Honda boys. But Chase made a mistake going to KTM if his goal was to improve his Motorcycle situation. That’s all.
Chase on KTM looks a lot like Chase on Honda. I don’t think it’s the bike.
I think he talks about the bike a lot... sometimes prompted, sometimes not, but never diverts the conversation to anything else...
I also think that pushing that 2% extra does put setup more on a knife edge which he rides, whereas the Hunters brother doesn't ride on that knife edge, they open up the corners and find creative lines etc, where I feel chase rides the same lines etc as Ando/Barcia/Mookie etc but tries to turn it up that extra 2%... which puts setup on a knife edge and pushes the limits of whats possible by the track on those lines -- see the crash this week, rut just gave out...
Its all in his head. Its the chink in his Armour, similar problem to Tomac
Well judging by his last to first performance I’m going to go out on a limb and say that KTM he is riding must not be the piece of shit everyone makes it out to be. I know it’s probably 80% rider but nobody not Ricky, James, Jeramy, Eli, Reed, RJ, Ward, Hanna, whoever, pick a name nobody is that dam fast on a shitty bike. I will never know as I ride woods/enduro only and am not fast enough to tell between stock and work’s suspension but that ride was amazing to watch.
This is exactly what I think, when I ask if he choked. Because that’s what he did when he failed to beat Eli for the 2022 outdoor title.
He literally moved over for Jett in Supercross. Like went wide and kinda slowed up. Jett was faster at the time. But it was still incredibly odd to see him not even try to beat Jett.
Atleast this last moto he had a crack at Jett. Passed him for first time. Ran ahead of him for a bit. But I am wondering if he only did that because he knew Jett was hurt and vulnerable? Would he have tried that on Jett fully fit?i hope he is just more confident and believes he can beat Jett now.
I want to see Chase get his shit together and truly push Jett when he is fit. At the moment we dont know what jett is truly capable of if he is pushed. People say hes riding at 50%, 70%, 80% etc. but we dont truly know. While injured hes giving 100% obviously. So hopefully after the break Jett is fit and Chase gives him hell. I dont think Hunter will be near them if that happens. Be nice to see Jett pushed to the point he makes a mistake. Because i honestly think he will push however hard he needs to to be ahead of Chase. Or crash trying. Chase has just crashed before Jett had to push that hard. But I truly believe Chase can force Jett to crash on his day.
Well said partner.
I was at Pala, I watched Chase follow Jett for the entire second moto. Stayed right on his ass. Chase would make a small mistake and lose a few seconds, but then he would reel Jett right back in. He looked faster than Jett to me, but he looked extremely hesitant to make a move, almost like he was second guessing himself. I think Jett can play this game all day, he doesn’t seem to mind being followed. However, we’ve seen Jett come undone when he gets a poor start, which is rare, or when people pass him. Chase needs to quit playing the waiting game and he needs to make moves on Jett earlier in the race to throw Jett off of his preferred game plan.
I agree and hope he can work through it.....but they usually can't. Not to change the subject, but I see similar behavior from Kitchen. He is crazy good, but cannot hold it together and now he is falling off the pace. Not sure he has the fight in him to ride to his capability.
Yeah, you’re right. Mental problems are less likely to resolve. You either have it or you don’t. Can’t train someone to want it. Funny you brought up Kitchen, he’s become one of my favorites and he has fantastic technique and flow especially in SX. I was hoping we would see something special from him after this last SX season, but he’s looked lackluster as hell all of a sudden.
He definitely didnt leave because of the bike thats a fact.
In fact if you listen to him talk about the ktm he has mentioned multiple times that his goal is to get the ktm feeling like his honda did, or that they found a setting when they went to that track in the hills that brought it closer to his honda.
So he left the honda only to try to get his new bike to feel like the honda… even though when he was on the honda he complained about the front end. Its def him and not the bike and yea he definitely left honda so hed be the #1 on a different team which I cant blame him for, but a lot of the probs are on him not the bike.
Pit Row
Nah, not hard to fix, just need to put the effort into it. If these guys would work with sports psychologists and be more careful about who they surrounded themselves with, who they listened to, etc, they can make a ton of progress in the mental game. Just need to treat it like they do their physical fitness. Dedicate to it, listen to experts and not folklore or their buddies, put the time in. Have to be willing to grind and do hard things on the mental side too but it's doable for sure.
I think Kitchen is badass and would be great for the sport at the top, but just not sure he can get there. I think he is defeated with Deegan having him covered and he cannot beat him because of that, so now he is getting handled by numerous others.
Unfortunately I see him as a long term 250 top 5 guy.....which is still amazing, but a far cry from some saying he will challenge for 450 titles.
I am a Chase fan...but I think its a stretch to say he isn't slower than Jett.
I can't even fathom how one would come to that conclusion or have that opinion. Aside from his own, tuck-the-front instances, I think Jet is toying with him and the rest of the field and anything that looks even slightly out of that situation is something Jet himself has done....rather than Chase or anyone else being better, at all, let alone consistently.
I just wish Chase would spend 10 minutes getting his lines and self in order before he "drops the hammer" each moto....
Getting consistency under your belt and then that last 2% of speed is usually way more important than blitzing and hoping you don't fall off and all the inconsistency that brings...IMO.
I'm a big fan of mental in all sports it's the biggest factor, but in this case it's not mental I actually believe chase is one of the better mental strong riders out there he probably believes he's better than Jett which is good.
Being a mental case is having weird rides like Eli had all his kawi years, that's mental.
Chase problem is he wants to ride a certain way which is to load the shit out of the bike which causes the bike to give way, him being heavy doesn't help either.
He needs to learn how to be lighter on the bike and have more balance, even if he figures that out it may not even be enough to beat Jett.
I’m pulling for him. I would love to see Kitchen mixing it up with the top 450 guys someday. I hope he puts in the work and doesn’t get down on himself. He’s got rare finesse on the bike. Really fun to watch. Sometimes you have to be that Dungey type of guy that’s willing to wait in the wings if a Villopoto or Stewart goes down, you can pounce on a title or a few wins. Grant Langston also was that guy, and has multiple championships to show. Respect to both Dungey and Langston btw.
Yes to this. Get in the mental gym so to speak, like pumping iron but for the mind and staying after it relentlessly. It would be interesting to know what kinds of things guys do to significantly up their mental game.
Signing Sexton has not been a PR success for KTM. They are going up against Jett who will most likely be one of the greatest ever and the fact that Sexton wont be able to beat him straight up in a series results in a lot of people questioning the bike and the team. Sometimes rightfully so, but i think people have gone way too far with it.
Im going to go out on a limb. In 2 years time, the top dogs at KTM will think in their head that this signing was bad from a ROI perspective and it made the product look much worse than what it actually was at the time.
Sooner or later most of the fans (and media) will wake up and just accept that it’s Chase and not the bike.
Just look at the shit Honda got from the Vitards the winter before Jett moved up on the 450.
People were trashing the bike so hard, saying that Chase needed to get off that shit before he got killed etc.
And now people say that the EXACT same bike (same generation of chassis) look the best out there and now all of a sudden the KTM looks bad?
Man i wish Prado were racing the Gasgas in the US right now so people could stop talking about how bad the Austrian chassis is now..
When you’re the top 1% in a sport it’s really hard to change your form / technique from years of practice to a new style and still be in the 1%.
Chase flexes the chassis more than say Jett.
Well, that still might be easier than changing the bike everytime he swing his leg over it and always chasing the perfect setting.
He should invest some time in it.
So who should they sign that will beat Jett?
I mean should all these factory teams just fold until Jett retires.
I should have added to my post this.
Im not saying that they should have signed anyone else. Sexton is the best possible rider KTM could have in America (well Prado might be up there outdoors but not in SX).
My point is, Sexton racing on a KTM has not been a PR success. They have been dragged through mud the whole year by fans and media and the broad consensus is that the bike and team is shit. Even though Sexton has been really good in the big picture.
Post a reply to: Chase, KTM, and the media.