Team Honda HRC’s Hunter Lawrence captured his third win of the 2023 season with a commanding performance at Daytona International Speedway, his first victory at the iconic venue. The Australian has opened the 2023 250SX East championship by winning three out of the opening four races and has quickly jumped away to a 14-point lead in the series standings. The 23-year-old spoke to the media following his first Daytona victory for this Conversation feature.

Image: Octopi Media.

You’re now half of a brother duo that has won Daytona which has never been done before. Are you proud of this?

Yeah, I didn’t know any other brother hadn’t won. It’s cool, we don’t really talk about it with any other event, but you always rub it in whenever we’re joking lightly. You know, with Jett it was Triple Crowns, but this year I missed out on a Triple Crown, so maybe they’re not our thing, but it’s fun.

Your early pass on Nate Thrasher, we couldn’t see if there was contact. Was that maybe a little aggressive early or no?

Depends how you look at it, I was coming out and he was outside I was inside getting roosted pretty bad in the sand section, then I kind of just jumped to the inside.So I didn’t feel contact, obviously it’s not the ideal scenario but you kind of see a shot and you’re making decisions you know. Sometimes you’re going to make wrong decisions sometimes you don’t. I went to the inside and that was the option that presented itself and I didn’t look back, I feel like if you look back at last week when I’m infront it’s going to come with hard racing. That’s what’s going to come with having the red plate when you look back at previous years with guys that have had the same thing, it’s part of it. So yeah, it is what it is and sucks that he went down, but that’s not what I wanted to happen.

Image: Octopi Media.

With this somewhat hybrid style supercross track did you make any changes to the bike?

We went one click stiffer on the shock, which might’ve been a rebound call because of the high-speed rhythm lanes, you know you’re hitting them a lot faster, but no honestly not, I feel like the past few years from leaning on the teams experience they come to Florida and we do the whole Daytona test, then we end up racing on our normal stuff, so it’s cool when you can trust in your setup and you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. The bike was great and we didn’t really change anything, just some mapping stuff throughout the day because of the humidity.

There’s only four guys with more wins on a Honda in the 250 class than you. Does that feel good to be one of the top all-time riders on the red machine?

Pretty good, I didn’t know that stat. I don’t know, I could care less [laughs], I can only be the best version of me when I ride and do well for the team, they’re stoked and Jett’s doing well on the other coast so it’s a cool time right now.