Coming off a 450-class podium sweep at the AMA Supercross World Championship finale in June, the Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing Team kept their momentum rolling into the 2020 AMA Pro Motocross Championship opener as Zach Osborne earned a career-first 450MX overall victory, while teammate Jason Anderson scored a moto-win and second overall for the day. Additionally, RJ Hampshire rode strong to claim a second-place podium finish in a highly-competitive battle for the 250MX title.
Following a lengthy delay in the 2020 race schedule, the nine-race championship finally got underway on Saturday at the legendary Loretta Lynn Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, home to the largest AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship in the U.S. and a familiar place for many of the team’s riders and crew. Heavy rainfall on Friday made for sloppy track conditions in the morning but the sun came out and dried things up to create a rough battleground for the season opener.
Zach Osborne, the third-place qualifier, got off to a top-10 start in Moto 1 and he worked his way into the top-five early on. He continued to put on a charge through the first half of the race, where he eventually made the move for second on lap 12. With six laps to go, Osborne chased after his teammate, Anderson, where he finished 4.9 seconds back for second-place. In Moto 2, Osborne shot off the line to capture the holeshot and settled into second for the first two laps before powering his way into the lead on lap three. After flawlessly leading 16 of the 18 laps in Moto 2, Osborne went on to take the moto win and put a stamp on the overall victory with 2-1 finishes.
“I’ve worked really hard to come back from my injury and to be here on this podium I’m blessed and so grateful to the people that have put this together to let us go racing in a very uncertain time,” Osborne said. “I knew we had a racehorse when we came here today because it’s the bike I finished with at Indiana last year and when a team brings you a bike like that, it’s hard to not do it justice.”
STORY: Husqvarna Motorcycles Congratulate Zach Osborne On A Successful Racing Career (November 2021)
STORY: Husqvarna Motorcycles Celebrate 100 World Championship Titles (August 2019)
STORY: Zach Osborne Injured (January 2019)
photos (c) Husqvarna Motorcycles