DAYTONA BEACH, Florida: Pierce Brown would have been content with a solid run last week in Arlington, Texas. In fact, he was happy simply to be racing.
Brown suffered one of the worst accidents of his career in the 2025 opening round of Monster Energy Supercross in Tampa, Florida, breaking his T5 vertebrae. He missed the remainder of the stadium season, attempted to return for one Pro Motocross round at Ironman Raceway near the end of its season, and then retired for the remainder of the year.
But what is a solid run?
In 2024, Brown scored one top-five in the Pro Motocross, which starts 40 riders per moto. In the Supercross series, he started 2024 with six consecutive top-fives, so that would have provided a solid benchmark. A podium finish would have undoubtedly met the criteria.
Brown had a little good luck and a lot of speed at AT&T Stadium. He benefitted from surviving a massive Turn 1 crash to give him track position and he challenged the leader, Jo Shimoda, in the early laps. Confusion over a red light contributed to Brown’s pass on Lap 6 of 20, but after taking the lead, he refused to hand it back.
“It’s been a while since I’ve raced a supercross a full year,” Brown said last week after the victory. “So it took me a little bit to get those nerves out of the way.
“I started off really good in qualifying and then Q2, I was struggling with the whoops, and it kind of compounded, I couldn’t really get a clean track and then struggled. I think I ended up sixth. And then heat race, terrible start, restart, another bad start and then I was kind of just like playing it safe.”
But Brown saved his top form for the feature.
“There was chaos everywhere,” Brown continued. “I just wanted to make it through the first couple laps and then make my passes, pick my points. But I was struggling with the, whoops. It was really like it came down to that all night long. Once I figured out the whoops in the main, I think I was able to put the rest of the track together.”
Brown scored his first career Supercross victory and with it, has the distinction of being the first rider with a three-digit number to hold the red plate in the 250 class since Christophe Pourcel in
2010. That was the second year the American Motorcycle Association began awarding the red plate to the current points leader instead of the defending champion.
“Having a red plate with three digits, it’s cool,” Brown told NBC Sports. “We’re just surprising ourselves day by day.”
Brown does not want the three-digit red plate to be a one-race anomaly. His streak of top-fives shows, he is strong in the opening rounds, but equally important, the two riders who joined him on the podium in Arlington were not expected to run as well as they did. Shimoda was returning from a major off-season injury and Daxton Bennick has only two podiums in the past two seasons, (both of which came in opening rounds).
“I feel like I’m back and I’ve been back for a couple months now,” Brown said. “It’s just good to finally let everyone see it. For so long, I didn’t know if I was doing the right things, training and riding wise, I hadn’t raced for any of it to show. So to get this win, it’s a big monkey off the back. And for the season, it’s put me in a really good spot to look at the championship. That’s the goal right now, week by week, doing our thing.”
A podium and perhaps even simply a top-five finish in Daytona should allow Brown to retain the red plate depending on how the other favorites finish. The bigger goal is for him to challenge for the win.
“It’s going to take another weekend, like last weekend for sure, but it’s doable,” Brown said. “I’m not saying it’s not going to be tough. This class is stacked right now, so yeah, we’re going to have to be on our Ps and Qs, but it’s nothing we can’t do.”
