The Prado Mystery

Wasn’t Prado’s test on the Kawi SX bike at a SX track? If so, then of course he’d have no idea how their outdoor bike was at that stage. 

If I had to guess what’s currently going on, I’d say he feels totally uncomfortable on the bike and is not willing to push it until he feels better. The starts are improving, but after a few laps he can’t sustain a competitive pace and it looks like he just gives up.

The only reason I can think of for why Kawi hasn’t told him to “shut the fuck up”, is that they know they’re not delivering on their end of the bargain. But then again neither is Prado. Shit look all round and I hope they sort it out on both ends.

His “the bike sucks!” routine is old news and it’s becoming more and more apparent that he just can’t hang in US motocross. The things he said in that latest interview certainly don’t match any of his performances this year. If I were him, I’d keep my mouth closed about the bike ,because it’s to the point now, where he looks kinda dumb. There are privateers that would love to be on that bike working with a high level team. Maybe he should think about going back home and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did just that after the season is over.

No man, you can’t say he is not good enought. He has win everyone on the field with his old bike. Hope kawi makes that shit moto finally works and people like u finally can stfu and watch prado win in usa…. “He should go back home” but then he comes in a 250 ktm and smokes everyone on redbud, what u gotta say about that?

There has to more to this story. Before the outdoors started he was happy with bike now it is a piece of crap.

He wanted more power? Did he get more power? Why didnt he twist throttle before season started? Good simple way to find out if a bike has power or not? 

It’s becoming clear that the bike will never be good until he wins.

If he gets second 0.5 second after Jett in a moto he will still blame the bike for not winning.

At this point it’s up to him to adapt to the tools he got and use them to show that he is as good as his mouth is.

I’m all for the European unfiltered answers but at one point he needs to start taking accountability for his poor results and that time was a long time ago now.

Between Anderson, Prado and the legendary PC curse, I couldn't help but imagining the Kawi guys watching Sexton yesterday and thinking "Thanks Lord, that guy will be with us next year, we'll just have to spend a season fixing his front end feeling issues and then everything will be right!"...

😄

One thing's for sure: the situation makes both Kawasaki and Prdao look bad, and it has to stop. Fast.

He is a hired professional but he is also a human. A lot of things weigh on him and he obviously isn’t performing.

I think he has run out of gas mentally. Team, bike, culture, opponents, being homesick. Facing all the above at the same time isn’t easy. Big kudos to those that can overcome all those hurdles. Prado clearly can’t.

It’s sad to see and I feel kind of sorry for him to be honest. It’s a sad situation for Kawi too, but at least they can go home after a bad day at work without being slaughtered on the internet.

My 50 cents

Whens the last time anyone has ever been consistently top 3 on a kxf 450 ?

I guess the logical response to that tantrum would be ,results speak for themselves. 

Chases results will far out weigh prados results if you want to compare the 2 brands. Same rider,tracks and competition.  Theres an argument to made about prados results, could be bike ,track ,heat,competition.  With chase it will be very easy to tell how the change effects him if at all.

Is it a mystery though? It’s pretty clear Prado is frustrated and is putting in no effort. He just rolls around at this point. He may not be happy with where the bike is at, but there’s also blame on him for not trying to make the best of it and atleast put his heart into a somewhat decent result. His attitude around the whole thing is pretty shitty imo. 

Id say that the MXdN is a one off race where you see miracle performances. Now it's 2025 and hes racing a full mx season and getting smoked. Your head is buried in the sand if youre strictly blaming the bike. The dude just quits. I dont care if he's not gelling with the bike. Dude has no heart and just up and quits

You beat me to it. No heart. I havent really gone in on him much this season but no excuses for quitting 

I don't know if I have ever seen an adult professional act so childishly. Was he a child phenom who came up through the ranks getting everything he wanted? This has just gotten really weird.

Nothing to do with US motocross when the other mxgp riders have the same or better results in the US, like Guillod and Paturel. And a 39 yo Cairoli gets top 10 with almost a stock bike.

It`s probably a combination of Prado and the bike. But from an interview with John Tomac it doesn`t sound like the Kawi team is the easiest to work with if you want changes. I guess it makes Prado frustrated and why he says "It`s not on him".

Racer X Online: Five championships with Kawasaki. A real good legacy there. You could have stayed there. You didn’t jump to Star Yamaha for the money. You went there for a chance at an equipment change that would propel Eli. I was not in the camp of this is going to make Eli a better rider, because he’s getting older, and this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in our sport. So, I commend you and Eli, Kathy, everybody for this… We’re only halfway through this thing, but man, you guys were looking for something different and you did it. It’s a bit of a risk, and it’s really working out. Take us through that a little bit and how stoked you’ve got to be so far how this thing is working.
John Tomac: Yeah, it was a gamble. We could have stayed at Kawi and Eli could have cashed his check and rode it out. We wanted to advance the ball. Eli felt like he had more in the tank, as far as results go. In order to change it up on the equipment side, we had to make the move. We pushed the Kawi guys pretty hard that last season to take some pretty big swings at changing some of the stuff we had on the bike, and they just wouldn’t go to where we wanted to go and try things. We had a certain amount of success there, but we wanted to try to really push the envelope, and they were just too conservative. That’s how I’m going to say it. They were too conservative. I’ll leave it at that.

Second moto, did he end up in 20th? So 19 other bikes have more power? You cant fool me to believe that the vintage RMZ’ has more power than the KXF or any privateers who are passing him with only slightly modified bikes. 

If I was Kawi, I would throw Mitch Harrison on Andersons bike. He would pass Prado every moto.  It would be good for Kawi to prove a point.  

I say you are actually Prado pretending to be Ayren, Because no one but Prado could be this silly!

You can't possibly be so stupid you think that a guy that lead 15min, and ends up around fifth if he pushes, actually tried and the power of the bike just got him a 20th 🙄

It's not a good look. I start to more believe that Kawi is saying "problem solved or much improved, can't do more", for every race and Prado gets pissed because they could do more but they arent allowed so just mails it in. Just as John Tomac said above, they refuse to go outside their window. That would make me pissed as fuck if they also have claimed they can give him what he needs in terms of power. 

Would love to hear more details in what he has requested and not gotten. Unfortunately if they part I think some fucking NDA will be forced from Kawi side so we won't get any details.

I don’t like Jorge’s interviews but I appreciate him being honest ( in his eyes) at least. Reminds me of f1 honestly. Those guys aren’t afraid to critique the car. 

As someone posted above Kawi wouldn’t give Eli what he wanted. Perhaps they are doing the same with Prado. 

Team vibe cannot be helping. El Hombre is out of sorts and on his way out. I can only imagine the stress and tension in that green truck, right now. Prado will be fine and Sexton’s presence should help him along the way. 

How down on power can the bike be at this point?  It’s a raced tuned 450 from a program that’s been doing this a long time.  They have the resources and are certainly motivated to make the changes so that their investment in Prado works.  As others have said, talented riders with heart can make a bad bike look good.  At this point, even if the bikes not 100%, you’d think Prado would be top 5.  19th?  That’s something else.

Prado so desperate with the bike he already made the swap to fight in the UFC yesterday

At least he has no bike there holding him up

Agree!! 

Stop chasing the perfect set up and put up a fight. That's what he's paid to do. But it looks like he has no desire to try and run up front.

I can't remember seeing him actually pass another rider this year. I'm sure there's a few, but not a lot. It's mostly him going backwords.

Someone said in the race thread that he was calling up MXGP teams. Is that true? Did they talk about it on the broadcast?

I'm also wondering how much power is missing. I know Herlings have said he can't ride Prado's bike because it would kill him. Phil still missing power.

Maybe you have to chose? Febvre seem to have 5-6 holeshots out of 39 tries this season and is the points leader.

Prado needs both start and race power I guess. He has never been someone that makes a lot of passes. 

With Factory engine resources available that include but not limited to; heads, porting, pistons, camshafts, crankshafts, flywheels, ignition maps, injection profiles and the like there is no possible way that bike cannot have enough power in any delivery he wants. Competition is next level right now with several teams. He is not in that tier.

Kawasaki didn’t give Eli what he wanted, yet he was still able to win championships.  Compare that to what’s happening now with Prado.  In addition, I’d bet Kawi learned from the experience with the Tomac’s and are more flexible now.  They hired Broc as a full time rider after that to work directly with each rider on the team to get the bikes set-up for their specific styles. Broc has stated that in the past few weeks, they have developed different engine packages to try to give Prado what he’s looking for.  The results just don’t make sense.

Exactly. It also isn't a good look when you take zero personal accountability and blame it all on the bike.

Inexplicable, but now it is beyond comprehension, something is really wrong. And it must be with Jorge.

It must not be the Kawi’s power but instead the brakes. They must work to good. I’ve  watched him get passed going down hill a lot.