Victory at the second SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) Playoff 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 season finale. This Five Questions feature details his night in St. Louis. 

Image: Octopi Media.

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

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

How special was it 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, [I’m] 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 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 lapped traffic, and everything is playing a part in 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 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.

Image: Octopi Media.

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 from what 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.

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 really 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 DirtWurx crew does their best job, and they do a good job of it.