With less than 48 hours until the gatedrop at 56th annual Daytona Supercross race inside the Daytona International Speedway, the Monster Energy Kawasaki SMX team announced that their star racer, Chase Sexton, will be sitting out this weekend.
“Monster Energy Kawasaki rider @chasesexton will miss Round 8 of @supercrosslive due to injuries to his hip and lower back sustained while prepping for Daytona,” the team said in a statement.
This raises questions about Sexton and the Monster Energy Kawasaki team.
Sexton is on his third team within the past five years. In 2021, he moved up to the 450 class for Honda HRC. He won one title with the team, and it was the 450 Supercross title in 2023. In 2024 and 2025 he raced for Red Bull KTM Factory Racing. He, again, won one title with the team, and it was the 2024 Pro Motocross title.
There are a few commonalities between both of these teams. He was able to win on both, but he was unhappy and ended relationships poorly with both teams at the end.
Going into 2026, he signed a three-year contract with Monster Energy Kawasaki, but it has not gone to plan so far. Sexton has only been on the podium once with the team, with a win at Anaheim 2 in late January.
Sexton has been on the ground a lot, has not looked comfortable, and has not had his typical finishes. He is a hard-charger and one of the toughest racers, so to see him sit out can give fans a bad feeling. He is currently fifth in the points standings and 27 points behind championship leader Hunter Lawrence. With the winner of each supercross race earning 25 points, this means Sexton is going to fall farther away from being in the fight for a title.
Back in 2025, Jorge Prado came over to race for his first full season on American dirt. He left the Red Bull GasGas Factory Racing team to ride for Monster Energy Kawasaki, and that ended horribly. Prado was unsatisfied with the bike and had no faith in it.
Prado went on to sign with KTM this off season. Ultimately, Sexton and Prado have done a bike swap. Prado has looked way more comfortable each weekend on his KTM, and Sexton has looked unstable.
Although Prado is sitting out this weekend due to an AC joint injury, he would still be considered the better of the two riders this season.
With Sexton having left earlier teams on bad terms, he does not have many options left if the Kawasaki route does not work out. However, there have been multiple instances within the sport where the first year a rider races a new bike, he does not do well – but his second year becomes a breakout year.
The real question people have now is whether Kawasaki is still a competitive bike. From 2017 to 2019, Eli Tomac won titles in Pro Motocross for Kawasaki, and then in 2020, he won the Supercross title with them. However at the end of 2020, Tomac left the team on bad terms to join Monster Energy Star Racing Yamaha. Since then, the team has not won another title.
This year will mark a seven-year drought in Pro Motocross and six-year Supercross title drought if they do not win a championship this year.
Monster Energy Kawasaki will only field Garrett Marchbanks, whose best finish, going into Daytona, is 13th place.
With Sexton being 26 years old, he is nearing the prime age for racing. Time will tell if Sexton made the right move switching to Kawasaki. But for now, all the fans can do is sit, wait, and hope he has a strong recovery.
