Thursday, July 31, 2014

2014 Motocross | Muddy Creek, TN

Photo: Cudby (racerxonline)
Jimmy Jack and I were sitting in Union Station the other day sipping a cool one, tossing around the idea of scaling some rock over the weekend.  As cool as that sounds, there's no way I'm sharing a rope with that monkey.  Between Fireball shots JJ did have one coherent thought; why not analyze both motos of one class?  Didn't think you cared, I asked.  I don't, he replied, I just thought it'd get me a free beer.

This week I decided to give my friend some props and focus on the 450 class only.  Just out of curiosity I thought I'd measure the performance of the top 10 from moto 1 to moto 2 and here's what I found.

Rider         Percentage Change
Roczen        +10.32%
Dungey        -12.28%
Stewart, J    +7.80%
Canard        +10.68%
Metcalfe      -24.47%
Peick         -33.73%
Grant         -56.33%
Stewart, M    -57.06%
Reed          -35.89%
Short         -15.43%

So how did this affect their finishes?

Rider          Moto 1     Moto 2
Roczen         2          1
Dungey         1          2
Stewart, J     5          11
Canard         4          4
Metcalfe       9          7
Peick          10         5
Grant          11         6
Stewart, M     14         10
Reed           16         9
Short          6          8

Jimmy is back home measuring his yard stick with a ruler but he did have time to pose the first question; how can James Stewart have positive performance yet finish worse in moto 2?  A thought like that had to hurt so I figured I'd better answer.  Before I get to that I want to point out pair of riders in Roczen and Canard.  Both had similar relative performances and notice how their finishes in moto 2 varied slightly.  

Their finishes aren't so surprising but the numbers indicate Canard had as good a ride as Roczen  with far different outcomes. So why the difference?  Just ask Canard and he'll tell you, it came down to the start. Again, not much of surprise but at least we have numbers to show for it.

Back to Jimmy - the answer is simple!  You didn't watch the races.  If you did you'd see that James was, well James and encountered more problems on the track.  It should be abundantly clear by now that timing is everything and I don't mean lap times.  Perhaps in another time or another year a rider like Trey Canard would be dominating the circuit but instead its guys like Villopoto and Roczen.  Its too bad that some great riders will someday fade into obscurity but until then I'll record their finest hours.

I'm trying to keep these posts short but there is so much more to gather from my charts I just don't have the time dig in deep; hopefully that will change at some point.

Till then, here are the 450 TRAPs for Muddy Creek.




 

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