The El Chupacabra, Blake Baggett, has been fairly quiet since retiring from professional racing back in 2020. Much of this being over-shadowed by a legal predicament with his prior racing team, the now-defunct Butler Brothers Racing. The door has been closed on that and do to typical legal matters, we'll never really know what happened with that storyline. Over the past year or so, we've seen Blake slowly posting more and more on social media as his son Braeker has been bitten by the two-wheel bug himself. However, no content of Blake himself riding...until this weekend when Baggett returned to the track. His Instagram post on the matter has caught a lot of attention, not just because fans and other racers alike were excited to see him back twisting the throttle, but the machine he was on and the setting turned some heads.
Blake Baggett turned up on a weekend at Fox Raceway, in a fresh Fox kit, to ride a Rockstar Energy branded Husqvarna FC 450. Complete with a Factory team mechanic (Jared Warrick) and a factory WP suspension technician (JR Boyd). Warrick is Christian Craig's wrench for the Rockstar factory team and JR Boyd is the suspension technician for the TLD team but was also Blake's crew chief during the Butler Brother days. This combination instantly fired up the rumormill with our forum and social media ablaze with comments that Baggett would return to racing and possibly fill-in for the injured Christian Craig come the Pro Motocross season opener.
However, the bike under Blake Baggett was just a stock Husqvarna FC 450 Rockstar Edition motorcycle and we lean towards it's just a man enjoying some throttle therapy. To confirm, we reached out to Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing Team Manager, Nathan Ramsey, for a comment on the situation.
"Blake is a good friend to several of us here at the Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing team so we told him that when he gets the itch to ride again, let us know and we will make it happen. He finally got the itch so we sent him out on a Rockstar Edition FC 450. He had a blast and I think it’s pretty clear that he still knows how to ride! I believe we all miss seeing Blake race so it was great to put him back on a bike for the first time since he retired. Hopefully we see it way more often!"
Hopefully, we aren't the buzz kills but it's great to see Baggett back on the bike.
Hey Blake, how about some more shredder clips? We know you've got the skills to pay the bills still.
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