Team Honda HRC’s Hunter Lawrence kicked off his 2023 Monster Energy Supercross 250SX East Championship in convincing fashion, riding a smooth and calculated race to take the win in Saturday night’s main event in Houston. The experienced Australian features in this week’s Fast Thoughts interview.

Image: Octopi Media.

Building throughout the day and coming into your own in the races…

I wasn’t trying to come out and establish anything, I’m confident in what I can do on a dirt bike. I know where I could’ve been better last year, so just trying to do that. Qualifying was a little rough, just trying to put together all the segments in one lap. I just couldn’t seem to put them all together in one lap, so we’ll work on that this week. That’s about it really, just happy to execute, we had two great starts in the heat and the main, so yeah it was a pretty good day overall.

The off track excursion early in the opening lap and making a pass on Tom Vialle…

Yeah, I got pretty lucky! Normally when you go off the track you’re either washing the front on the boards or the concrete on the side, or you get a tough block banner caught up or something, so I got pretty lucky on that one. But yeah, it was cool to pass the Euro guy in the sand section, that felt good [laughs].

Your main strategy to continue winning races this year…

I look back at last year and the first few races my starts weren’t amazing, then obviously A3. So, that’s pretty much it, I won everything besides the last one by a bike length, so my second half of the season was really good. But yeah, its hard to say, because every race you go into you feel like you have to win, but recognising the one night where you have to settle for a second, rather than taking a risk you don’t have to and ending up one the ground, it’s tough because you don’t want to just roll over, so you got to know when it’s the right night, and that’s where the experience comes in.

Image: Octopi Media.

Enjoying the wins as they come…

We definitely enjoy them as much as we can, because racing only lasts a matter of years, maybe 10, 12 or 15 years. Then 20 years later, you just miss it, you miss the racing, you miss the pressure on the line, you miss the nerves and the adrenaline. We enjoy it, we love it and we work hard for it, so it’s important to enjoy it.

The possibility of you winning 250SX East and brother Jett winning 250SX West…

It’s cool to think about it, but we’re still nine rounds away from Salt Lake City, so there’s a lot of racing to go yet. Anything can happen, so we’ll just do our best and check off the boxes and we’ll see. You can ask that question at Salt Lake, or maybe you can’t, we’ll see.