Victory in SMX Playoff 2 of 2025 inside The Dome at America’s Center was a clutch moment for Hunter Lawrence, with his 1-3 scorecard launching him into 450SMX title contention ahead of the triple points-paying finale. Hear from the Honda HRC Progressive rider post-race in this Debrief interview.

450SMX

Image: Octopi Media.

Hunter, Playoff 2, these have been special for you. What kind of tone did you start this day with that ultimately got you here?

That’s a great question. I don’t even know, it’s not even that deep. Like I’m racing, just trying to do the best I can, just trying to make ends meet, just working away.

How special was this to celebrate this day? Not just your win, but with your brother’s success today in moto two, then Jo Shimoda, that had to have been quite the celebration at the end of the race today.

Yeah, I don’t care about Jett’s success in the second moto, more pumped for Jo. Happy to get the overall. Jett’s had enough wins, so we can just overlook that one. Yeah, it was good. The week actually got off to a pretty weird Thursday night dinner at a local restaurant – that was the most weirdest experience ever. So it was good to turn it around and finish on a high note.

Can you take us through the last few moments of race two? Jett’s there, you guys are reeling in on that, lap traffic and everything is playing a part into it. How was that battle for you to go through especially on a track like this?

It was tricky, because I think all of us think the same thing when we’re coming up on lappers on a track where it’s so tough to gain time, and I think it’s pretty like, ‘Oh, shit, get out of the way.’ Because, yeah, the slightest bobble can cost you time, or maybe have you lose a position. It was cool. I can only imagine it would have been pretty sweet to watch from a fan point of view. It was a sweet race.

Two questions about the track. First up, what do you think of this one? It’s the first one we’ve done in a dome. It’s kind of a tame Supercross track, different than SMX is normally. Then, in that split lane, it looked like in qualifying, everyone had their fastest lap on the inside. The inside was the line in the first main, then in the second main it looked like you figured out the outside was faster. Take us through that switch.

It’s the same reason you see us cutting down in the berms more. The top gets too bumpy. We’re running pretty close to a Supercross setup bike, and you can do that for a qualifying lap, but every lap hitting those really harsh bumps, it kind of beats you up a little bit. Same thing, better drive, go through the next double a little flatter as well. It’s funny how something doesn’t work all day – even yesterday it wasn’t working, then by the second moto it comes around, but it’s cool.

Max [Anstie] was able to quite consistently quad into the sand to come out of the rhythm section. Was that something you guys did throughout the day at all? Why was that not a racing line?

Yeah, you get triple and then jump off the last rhythm over the first sand roller on the inside, which kind of seemed to be a good flow. If you landed the quad, the bike compressed and then uncompressed when you want to be light. So you kind of just had to be patient in that first bit of the sand. The outside didn’t really come around all day, it didn’t seem like.

When you think of SMX and since 2023 from Chicagoland and what that layout was, and then when you think of a stadium like tonight, what is the ideal track for SMX in your opinion?

I don’t really know, actually. Last year Texas was a cool layout, I thought, but the dirt was super, super hard. Charlotte, I thought, was a pretty good layout, just obviously the rain made the track really soft – so it was really tricky. But I thought that layout was good. I don’t know, I think an ideal layout would be something that probably wouldn’t be real good to race, but it’s just fun, you know. It’s kind of tough. I couldn’t really put a pen to paper on what I think the perfect ideal layout would be for the SMX series. The Dirt Wurx crew do their best job, and they do a good job of it.