Jett Lawrence has now competed in 20 AMA Pro Motocross Championship races on a 450 and has 19 overall wins. But unlike in 2023 where he won every single moto, Jett has not been perfect to start the season, he has just been pretty dang close.
It was only a little over five years ago when Jett Lawrence busted onto the scene and was leading his third ever Monster Energy AMA Supercross race at Anaheim 2 in 2020. When Dylan Ferrandis made the pass on the last lap, the young Lawrence ended up trying to fight back and went down hard. That race was just the beginning and showed fans a glimpse of the greatness Jett carried. However, some fans still think of Jett as that 16-year-old kid, so eager for a win he would rather throw it away than get second.
In Jett’s perfect season he went mostly unchallenged to go 22-0. With coming back from injury, and with the depth of the field in 2025, many wondered how he would handle the pressure. Would remnants of the old Jett shine through, willing to risk it all for a moto win? The answer is no. We have seen a very mature Jett Lawrence so far this season, one who is focused on the bigger picture and stays calm in pressure situations.
“When you start back there in mud, especially, it’s a little scary because you don’t know what’s gonna happen.” -Jett Lawrence Align Media
At Hangtown in the first moto Jett did not get the start and by the time he got into third Eli Tomac and Aaron Plessinger were gone.
He said he wanted to conserve energy in the heat and hoped that third in the first moto would be enough, and it was. Again, at High Point in the second moto Jett got an awful start, just as the rain started to fall. The track deteriorated and vision was terrible as Jett explained in the post-race press conference:
“You just had to be aware of where you can push on the sighting lap, thankfully you knew where it was rock hard and where we had some little bit of fluff in certain areas where, you know it might be a little drier underneath there if you hit that,” he said.
“So, it’s just really using that sighting lap to your advantage and going, ‘Okay,’ picking up the small details and then on, obviously the first laps, trying not to follow, because so much can go on and there’s carnage going everywhere because people can just send it and slide out and take someone out. So, when you start back there in mud, especially, it’s a little scary because you don’t know what’s gonna happen.
But It’s just trying not to follow and trying to catch up on those lines that no one else is on before, so you can get a couple passes through and then once it’s spread out then you can kind of search for lines, but thankfully I kind of found most of my lines straight away.”
Keeping the mind calm in the chaos and mud is key. If not, the mistakes can keep compounding onto one another. But Jett was able to work his way into third before the red flag, which was again good enough for the overall.
“I think the biggest thing was trying to not make the mistake any bigger that I made on the start and set myself further back.
“I think the biggest thing was trying to not make the mistake any bigger that I made on the start and set myself further back.” -Jett Lawrence Align Media
“I think the biggest thing was trying to not make the mistake any bigger that I made on the start and set myself further back, you know, Eli and Hunter are pretty much gone,” Lawrence said. “I could see AP up ahead, I’m like, ‘If I can just get to him, I think it’ll be the best I can do,’ and thankfully that was third place. I had some really good lines that I felt like I was flowing well with and using the paddle tire in the sloppy areas, so I was happy about that and yeah, I don’t know where, what time we were at when they red flagged it, but thankfully we’re in third so we could get it [the overall].”
A 1-3 for first overall. Again, the results don’t show just how close the racing was. Even in the first moto Jett made a mistake allowing Plessinger and his brother Hunter to get around. But Jett explained how he didn’t panic and was able to regroup.
“The first thing that came into my head was, ‘That’s not very ideal,’” he explained. “You just kind of, just like golf, once you swing and hit the ball and where the shot lands, if it’s good, it’s great, but if it’s bad, ‘All right, how can I fix that,’ you know. And the bike’s stalled and ‘All right, it’s not ideal. Let’s start the bike up again, see where we’re at,’ then regroup from there on and get back on the lines I was taking and put a little bit of a charge on to see if I can get back to where I was. You know, it’s like kind of, you don’t really get too flustered about it, just kind of, ‘All right, that’s what happened, just move on to the next.’”
A bad day for Jett Lawrence means he doesn’t win both motos but still gets the overall. It’s like Ryan Dungey’s career on steroids. Dungey won so many championships because when he wasn’t winning, he was always still on the podium. It’s not that champions don’t make mistakes, it’s that they don’t let them compound into something bigger. It’s not that champions don’t want to win every moto, they just look at the bigger picture. Jett’s season may not be perfect, but his mindset is.
