PALA, California: Haiden Deegan made his highly anticipated professional 450 debut this weekend at Fox Raceway as Jett Lawrence returned from a serious ankle injury suffered during the off-season.
Deegan dominated the 250 Supercross West division and easily defended this 2025 championship, wrapping it up with two rounds remaining, before moving up a class. Lawrence missed the entire 450 Supercross season.
And yet, these two riders, who were still waiting to turn a competitive lap in 450 competition before the first gate drop at Fox Raceway, demanded the lion’s share of headlines during the two-week break between Supercross and Motocross.
“It’s great to have a new rivalry like there was with James [Stewart] and Ricky [Carmichael and stuff like that or James and Chad [Reed], so it’s always good,” Lawrence said during the Pro Motocross pre-season press conference. “Sport loves a rivalry and obviously Haiden and I are really close in age, so it’s like a perfect mix. We’re going to be racing each other for a pretty long time. It’s going to be fun.”
Deegan and Lawrence’s first opportunity to evaluate one another began informally on Friday during the Press Day ride. Deegan followed Lawrence for several laps during the 450 Group A session.
He put those lessons to work when the clock ran in Saturday morning’s first practice session.
Deegan showed significant speed, posting the fourth-fastest lap of 2:21.630, which was half a second off the pace of the leader, Hunter Lawrence.
Jett still had some rust to knock off. He was 14th with a time of 2:25.785, but Jett can be slow to come to speed when he is evaluating his health.
“Rookie versus the champ,” Deegan said on Friday. “I feel like it’s been a while since that’s really been a thing and I think it is growing the sport a hundred percent. I think also kind of got to pay some respect on myself too because now they’re comparing a rookie to the champ, which is pretty cool. So that honestly hypes me up.”
The team must have used a huge rubber hammer between Saturday’s two sessions to get Jett’s rust knocked loose. He blistered the track on his first lap of Qualification 2 with a 2:17.5 to jump to the top of the board for a while. He was surpassed by Hunter and Jorge Prado in the closing laps before landing third on the chart.
Deegan (2:19.6) also picked up his pace, but slipped down the overall order to sixth.
Moto 1 gave fans the battle they craved.
Both riders got a bad start, but found one another two laps into the race. Deegan passed Jett briefly before relinquishing the position for the remainder of the race. Slicing through the field from outside the top 15, they cracked the top 10 midway and stayed within one position for the remainder of the moto.
Jett finished fourth with Deegan fifth. Deegan was within three seconds of Jett until the final lap, when he lost pace in traffic.
Moto 2 had a similar feel to the first race. Jett and Deegan had modest starts in this race also. Jett consistently made his way through traffic with Deegan remaining one position behind on nearly every lap.
When the checkers waved over the field, Jett finished one position ahead of Deegan in both motos.
Jett was scored third with results of fourth and third; Deegan finished fifth overall with a fifth and a fourth.
