Monster Energy Star Racing Yamaha’s Aaron Plessinger came out firing in the opening round of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross season, taking third overall and surprising himself by breaking away from the field on the heels of Ken Roczen in the second moto.

After a breakout season of Monster Energy Supercross, Plessinger warned in multiple pre-season interviews that he was going to continue his momentum as the outdoor championship kicked off.

True to his word, he notched 4-2 moto scores as the series got underway at Fox Raceway on Saturday to take third overall on the day, his career-best so far in just his eighth national in the premier class.

The Ohio native broke down where that confidence stemmed from following the race.

“I knew coming into outdoors I was going to be up there, if not on the podium, top five, top 10, somewhere around the top spots, Plessinger explained. “I just felt really, really good these last four weeks getting ready for outdoors.”

“The first time I hopped on my outdoor bike I felt really good and we didn’t really have to change much until we started testing a little bit closer to [round one].

“But yeah I think my confidence for outdoors just came with doing my motos, clicking off good day after good day and feeling as prepared as I was in 2018, I had a lot of motos under my belt back then and have a lot of motos under my belt now.”

While he expected to be toward the front, Plessinger admitted it surprised him a bit to be running up front, breaking away from the pack with Roczen in the second moto.

“It almost surprised me the second moto just keeping up with Ken [Roczen] like that, it was gnarly,” he continued. “We put a pretty big gap on third place and I got really really sketchy one moment and I looked back and didn’t really see anybody.

“I thought somebody would be right there, but you know we were riding so good and I was just feeding off of him and doing some of the lines that he was doing, then I had some lines of my own that were pretty good, but man we were riding so good. I’m stoked on it.”

With a round under his belt and riding a high from the opener, Plessinger and the rest of the series are set for the second round at Thunder Valley Raceway this Saturday in Colorado.