Cooper Webb and Justin Cooper Deliver Double Podium in Seattle
Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Cooper Webb closes the gap in the 450SX title fight with a runner-up finish, while teammate Justin Cooper joins him on the podium in third / Feb 16, 2026 /
One thing about Cooper Webb — he never stops fighting. It’s that mentality that has earned three premier-class titles in Monster Energy AMA Supercross. And while Saturday night wasn’t the third-straight win in Seattle, Washington, that he was aiming for, the runner-up finish may prove important in his pursuit of a fourth 450SX crown.
“You always want to win, but second place, we’ve got to just keep taking these and cutting the points down,” said Rich Simmons, Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s 450 Team Manager. Two races ago, Coop was 24 points down, and now he’s 11. We’ve just got to keep working at it.”
A 13-point swing in the class as stacked as the 450SX Championship is no easy feat, but Webb and his team kept working, kept improving, and it showed at Round 6 of the championship at Lumen Field. In addition to his best qualifying of the season in third, the North Carolina rider grabbed the holeshot in his heat race. It was a great battle with Hunter Lawrence, with Webb ultimately finishing runner-up after an error had him on the ground.
In the main event, it was another great start from the reigning champ as he grabbed his second holeshot of the evening. Webb also clocked the fastest lap on Lap 2 and had a decent gap up front, leading for over half the race, but on Lap 14 Eli Tomac made his move and rode on to remain unchallenged.
“Eli got around me and had some good laps,” Webb said. “I just tightened up for sure and got a bit of arm pump. At the end of the day, I can’t keep hitting whoops like that and expect to win. We’ll get back to work. I want to give it up to the team. We did a great job all day. We worked on our starts this week, and it showed tonight. I got my first holeshot, which was awesome. Led a bunch of laps, which was the first time this year, so that was nice.””
Webb’s second-place finish moved him closer to the points leader as he heads to his favorite event on the calendar – Arlington Supercross.
“We’ll take the positives and keep plugging away, Webb said. “We’re crawling back into the championship, so I’m stoked on that. We’ll keep digging. This is a long championship, and we’ll keep fighting through and hopefully click off some better results next weekend.”
Although he didn’t have as good a qualifying as he had hoped in eighth, Cooper got a good start to his heat race in third and made his way through to the runner-up spot, where he would finish to earn his best heat race result this season. With a good gate pick for the main event, he got another good start in fourth, and although he was shuffled back to seventh soon after, he kept pushing and rode some strong laps to make his way into the top five. A late-race incident between Hunter Lawrence and Ken Roczen opened the door — and Cooper was right there. He capitalized, moved into third, and never looked back, earning his first podium of the season.
“It was a good night, all around,” Cooper said. “Not the best qualifying, but then the heat race was one of my best of the year. I got a third-place start and then made it to second. I had a good gate pick for the main, and I started around seventh or sixth. I made a few passes and was kind of hovering around fourth and fifth for most of the race. Then I was able to capitalize on some mistakes by other riders, get together with them, and get into the podium spot, and just hit my marks. It feels good to take a podium this early in the season. Fourth last weekend and third this weekend – we're trending in the right direction and looking forward to more racing.”
Seattle Supercross is known for having some of the toughest conditions on the calendar, and this year was no exception.
“It’s just Seattle, the track was absolutely gnarly,” Cooper said. “Twenty minutes plus one out there with all the 450s, it gets really demanding. A lot of focus is involved, and I just put together solid laps and got a little gift from those two, but you’ve got to stay in it.”
For both riders, the momentum continues to build. Next weekend, they head indoors for Round 7 of the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship and the Monster Energy SMX World Championship at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
“It was a pretty good day and a step in the right direction with everything,” Simmons said. “Qualifying was good for Webb, and even though Justin was eighth, he was right there in the first one. Starts were a lot better. Webb got a good start in every single one, and Justin's starts were more consistent. So, that's the biggest thing for us. We've really been working on that, and we've made some headway. We'll move on to next week and just keep trying to make forward strides and take that win.”