2023 was a big year for Spain's Jorge Prado. After three years on the 450 overseas, the standard bearer of Factory GasGas in MXGP finally put it all together en route to his first World Title on the big bike. While injuries to guys like Tim Gajser and Jeffrey Herlings certainly made things easier, you have to be out there to win Championships, and Prado was able to wrap things up with nearly a 100-point gap to Romain Febvre of KRT Kawasaki.
Some time ago, after the Motocross Des Nations, Prado made a little excursion to California, to do some Supercross testing. It's been an open secret for some time, that he'll likely be a full-time rider in the SuperMotocross World Championship starting in 2025, so getting his feet wet would have made some sense. Rumors that also popped up earlier this year, were that Prado would potentially participate in Anaheim 1 Supercross, with the 2024 MXGP Championship still being a couple of months out from that point. Not only is he now in for A1, but Prado is set for San Francisco and San Diego, as well, as confirmed this morning by GasGas.
What to Know about Prado
As someone who's watched not the most, but enough MXGP racing over the last few years, here are the big things you should know about Prado going into this Supercross season. Firstly, much like Tom Vialle, he's a world-class starter. The GasGas rider has outright led the MXGP class in Moto holeshots in three consecutive seasons, pacing things with 14 in 2023.
The big drawback, however, at least until about the quarter mark of this last MXGP season, is that Prado had a tough time sealing the deal in Moto 2s. Specifically, this looked like a pace/stamina issue, but Prado looked significantly better as things winded down in Moto 2s this year than in years past. Luckily, he's not going to have to worry about getting up for two 30-minute Motos until March. His pace otherwise is excellent, and at surface level, that has translated to the SX test track.
How Will Prado Fare?
I think it's fair to question how well Prado will do in a monumentally deep 450 Supercross field. Chase Sexton, Eli Tomac, the Lawrence Brothers, Malcolm Stewart, Jason Anderson, Ken Roczen, etc. This is a step up in quantity from what Prado has running against for the bulk of the last year. Ultimately though, I think if Prado can make things work with his racecraft and raw pace, I'd say he's probably going to be in the range of an 8th-12th place guy, give or take a few spots. Regardless, this is a great development in what should be another excellent season of Supercross racing.
Main Image via GasGas