Team Honda HRC’s Chase Sexton delivered a fourth-place result in his second race back at Arlington 1, narrowly falling short of the podium and putting together a race that he will be able to build upon in the second half of his rookie campaign.

Sexton had sat out six races following his crash at Houston 2 while recovering from a shoulder injury, then returned at Daytona to finish in eighth position after fading during the main event.

It was a commendable effort at Arlington 1 for the 21-year-old reigning 250SX East champion, setting the goal of podium finishes and potentially a 450SX main event victory before the season’s out. It’s all in a bid to prepare him for a title shot in 2022.

“For me, mostly just trying to get back to racing and back up to speed,” Sexton explained. “It’s a little more difficult than I thought, especially in the 450 class. Everyone gets into such a groove and, Daytona, I got smoked. I went from second or third to like eighth – I was not happy about it.

“This weekend I wasn’t super fast in practice, but I felt really good on the bike. I had an okay heat race, but had a bad start, got an okay start in the main event and found my way past a few guys. I was in third for a while, but I made a few mistakes and Jason [Anderson] got me.

“I feel like those are the kind of rides it’s going to take for me to build. I want to compete for a championship next year, but I just need experience. Obviously I’d love to be on the podium or maybe get a race win, that’s the ultimate goal and why I train so hard, so for me it’s just getting better every weekend and building off of yesterday.”

Sexton also had the opportunity to recall his wall-jump attempt at Daytona last weekend, admitting that coach James Stewart ‘was definitively encouraging’ him to try and make it over the following single jump. He’s now near fully recovered.

“I rode press day last week and I kind of thought it was possible,” he said. “The wall was pretty flat compared to a real wall, so I thought the gap was doable. I just didn’t know how it was going to shoot me and it obviously shot me way longer than I thought it was going to – 10 feet shorter or 10 feet longer it would have been a different story.

“[James] was definitely encouraging it, he definitely wasn’t shying away from it at all. I like to jump, I’ve always been a jumper and it was kind of me self-driven… I knew it could be a lot faster if I could have gotten it down, but obviously the result wasn’t worth what I did.”