Hunter Lawrence regains title momentum with 2026 Denver AMA Supercross win

The 2026 Denver AMA Supercross round saw Hunter Lawrence return to winning ways as he regained momentum in the title race.

Lawrence came into the Denver round four points behind Ken Roczen after they finished third and first, respectively, at Philadelphia a week earlier. Roczen had won four of the previous five races, while in that time Lawrence had finished off the podium twice with a sixth in Cleveland and an 18th at Detroit.

Beating Roczen in Denver, then, was crucial for Lawrence, and he went about it in the right way, getting a strong start and exiting the first turn behind only Jorge Prado, whom the Australian dispatched within a couple of laps of the start.

Roczen started a few positions further back in fifth. He was gifted a spot when Eli Tomac stalled in the sand on lap one, but his passes on Cooper Webb and Jorge Prado were all of his own making.

The Suzuki rider was four seconds behind Lawrence when he got into second place with 17 minutes left on the clock, but he ultimately proved unable to make a dent in that margin and Lawrence’s lead extended to 12 seconds by the end of the race.

Roczen, then, settled into second place, which seemed to be coming under threat when the aforementioned Tomac made his way through on Prado, but like Roczen the two-time champion was unable to close the gap in front of him and finally settled for third. For Tomac, it was a first podium since the Birmingham race at the end of March.

After Tomac, Prado’s slide down the order wasn’t yet finished as Cooper Webb tried to find his way through, but Prado defended strongly and in the end that resulted in Webb going down in the second of the three bowl turns that split up the switchback section across the start straight.

The Spaniard stayed upright but was soon passed by Malcolm Stewart (who had got to the Main Event via the LCQ after a crash caused his front brake to stick in his heat race) and Chase Sexton, who got to fifth after starting outside the top-10, while Webb ended up 10th and finally out of the championship battle, mathematically.

Garrett Marchbanks, Justin Barcia, Dean Wilson, and Dylan Ferrandis also got top-10 finishes, although for Ferrandis it could’ve been much better had he not gone down with Justin Cooper while trying to pass the Star Racing Yamaha rider for sixth towards the end of the race. Cooper himself ended up 13th.

Next week sees the conclusion of the 2026 AMA Supercross season in Salt Lake City on 9 May. Roczen goes there with a one-point lead over Hunter Lawrence, so it is almost as close to a ‘winner takes all’ scenario as it’s possible to be.

250SX: Deegan continues winning run

Haiden Deegan took the 250SX West win in Denver in familiarly comfortable fashion. The Star Racing Yamaha rider led more or less from lights to flag in the penultimate round of the season, continuing his podium run that stretches back to round two and further strengthening his command over the West Coast field, a command that was further highlighted by him lapping up to ninth place.

Levi Kitchen and Ryder DiFrancesco completed the podium behind Deegan, then Max Anstie and Kaiden Minear rounded out the top-five. 

Minear was sent to the LCQ after the heat after he missed the finish jump on the final lap when Kitchen passed him on the inside. Missing the finish jump meant he was classified a lap down in 12th.