2017 Supercross Week 9 -- By-The-Numbers Recap: Toronto
3/5/2017
At Toronto, Eli Tomac had another impressive win, maintaining his status as the fastest guy in Supercross. Ryan Dungey had impressive race himself, but that was to move from 20th at the opening section up to 2nd. This recap will be especially brief, so use the charts below to check out the positions and laptimes of any and all 450 riders from Toronto.
LAP CHARTS
(Note: now interactive, so hover over the lines to see the Rider/Lap/Position.)
450SX Class
Since Dungey was stuck in traffic early (as was 4th place finisher Chad Reed), and 3rd place finisher Broc Tickle never matched Tomac's speed, that leaves Blake Baggett as the most interesting challenger to Tomac. What's interesting is that Baggett did manage to keep pace (sort of) with Tomac until Baggett's crash in Lap 5. Baggett even rode at a speed faster (!) than Tomac in laps 7, 8, and 9, before he apparently runs out of steam -- in Lap 10 and beyond, Baggett wouldn't be able to keep the same pace as Tomac or Dungey until the very end of the race:
3rd Place And The Other Podium Contenders
Broc Tickle put up his career best Supercross finish, but didn't have a pace that seemed all that much faster than Reed or 6th place finisher Cole Seely. Tickle got a great start, had several good laps early, then made the advantage stick:
As mentioned by the announcers, Dungey's points lead has been cut to 24. With 8 more races of a hypothetical Tomac #1 & Dungey #2 would mean a tie in points with Tomac as the champ based on wins. While 8 straight wins is plausible, the likelihood is extremely low. Even if you give Tomac a 95% chance of winning each race, that would only be a 66% chance of winning all of the remaining races. If you give him a 90% chance of winning each race (that still means he would win 9 out of 10 races), his chance of winning out drops to 43%.
So, Tomac either needs to show consistency like he's never shown before, or he needs a little help from Dungey finishing worse than 2nd. But after a night where Dungey had a lot going against him with a terrible start in the Main Event, he still finished 2nd, then maybe Tomac's only way to the top is just that -- stay hot and make it a championship-caliber win streak to keep the title chase alive.
LAPTIMES TOOL
Posted by: SagehenMacGyver47 ::: As always – Feedback welcomed
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