Hangtown extras
5/22/2016
In addition to the lap charts for 450 and 250 from yesterday, we'll
look at some more specific issues from Hangtown below.
How fast was Tomac as he went 12th to 3rd in Moto 1? How fast was he, relative to Baggett, once he got to 3rd?
It seemed like Eli Tomac was really flying as he made his move from up through the pack into 3rd place (temporarily). He caught Blake Baggett around Lap 6 and made the pass in Lap 7. Baggett hung with him though, as the two of them passed Marvin Musquin and then Cole Seely, putting Tomac in 3rd and Baggett in 4th. For as fast as it seemed like Tomac was going, it was remarkable that Baggett was able to keep up. Then, to all of our surprise, Baggett dialed it up to 11, got back in front of Tomac and then pulled away. So, what did their speed look like during this roller coaster ride? Compared to Seely, the Hangtown lap times of Tomac vs Baggett (where the top of the chart is faster and the bottom is slower):
The dashed lines represent the four sections of the race, as I see it. First, Seely was really pushing it, and opened up a lead. Around Lap 4 or 5, though Tomac got it going, and he traded laps with Seely, but was overall slightly faster in Laps 5, 6, 7, & 8 - during that time Baggett was noticeably slower. The third section starts between Laps 8 & 9, where Seely really stars to slow, and Baggett speeds up enough that he and Tomac are staying pretty even, where sometimes Baggett has the faster lap and sometimes Tomac does. Then, the final section where Baggett just gets to a whole other speed: in Lap 15 he puts in his fastest lap of the race. And while Baggett is speeding up, Tomac seems to be wearing down.
To smooth out the chaos, we can look at these in a moving average, in the chart below. Keep in mind that once the moving average is put in place THEY ARE NO LONGER REAL NUMBERS. Sorry for the all caps, but for instance, in Lap 14 below, it looks like Baggett was faster than Tomac - that's not true, it's just the smoothing of the lines makes it look that way -- so take this chart to be informative in a general sense, not a specific one. Also added in Josh Grant for another reference, since he was riding around the same place as these three:
Here, I think you can see the sections more clearly: Seely builds an early lead; Tomac catches up; Baggett matches Tomac's speed for a while; and then Baggett takes off. Tomac, Seely, and Grant all tailed off in the latter half of the race. Baggett did too -- right up until Lap 15 when he apparently found a second wind (to put it mildly).
So in conclusion, Tomac was putting in some fast laps in Moto 1: in 7 of the laps (5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 & 14) Tomac was faster than both Seely and Baggett. But the other 10 laps, either Baggett or Seely was faster (in fact, Trey Canard's 7th lap was faster than any lap from Baggett/Tomac/Seely/Grant), which might mean that Tomac wasn't going quite as fast as he seemed.
Roczen vs Dungey -- just how solid was the sweep from Roczen in getting 1-1?
Looking at the side-by-side comparison of their lap times:
If you're Ryan Dungey, I think you're looking at Moto 1 and saying "10 out of 17 laps had Dungey ahead or just behind Ken Roczen", to put a positive spin on what seemed a very convincing victory by Ken Roczen.
If you're Roczen, I think you're looking at Moto 2 and saying that Roczen was faster than Dungey in 14 of the 17 laps (Roczen was faster in Lap 1, not pictured). And Roczen had 5 different laps that were faster than Dungey's fastest lap (Lap 8).
Posted by: SagehenMacGyver47 ::: As always – Feedback welcomed
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