Hangtown "This-Week" Predictions Review
5/23/2016
How did the "This-Week" predictions do for
MX Outdoors in Week 1 at Hangtown? This being the season opener, the numbers are relying only on past motocross seasons and
the most recent Supercross results. So, that leaves a lot of possibility for error, you would think. To an extent, the injury
adjustment and track adjustment should help limit the error. Despite all that, I think the predictions did pretty well for the
450's first week, although they didn't get the winner right:
Even though Ken Roczen wasn't correctly predicted as the winner, the other Top 5 were each off by 1 spot. In all there were 2 that were exact and 7 that were off by 1 -- meaning that nearly half of the Top 20 was predicted within 1 spot, despite it being the first race of the season.
Some notes for the 450 class:
Ryan Dungey had finished 2nd again, which makes it 5 years in a row that he's finished 2nd at Hangtown.
Since Ben Lamay didn't ride or isn't riding, that moved Benny Bloss to #19 in the predictions, as you see above, and he ended up 18th overall (21 / 14).
Marvin Musquin, despite having no prior history in the 450 MX class and therefore only 250 data, was predicted 8th and finished 8th. Probably more lucky than good, but that's an encouraging sign for the translation used to compare 250 results with 450 results.
Cody Cooper was the only rider outside the predicted Top 20 to make it into the actual top 20 finishers, at #19.
As for the Location Adjustment, it did not fare so well - only 1 of the 3 major adjustments worked out as expected:
Trey Canard was expected to finish 1 spot better than his prediction before the track adjustment (5th --> 4th), but he finished in 5th.
Weston Peick was expected to do slightly better than his prediction before the track adjustment, though it wasn't expected to gain him any spots in the final ranking. But, he finished 3 spots worse that his original prediction, largely due to a crash or some other problem that lead him to DNF Moto 1.
Justin Brayton was expected to do slightly worse than his original prediction, losing one spot (19th --> 20th), and he did do worse, actually finishing in 20th, so the Track Adjustment appeared correct in this case.
These adjustments are all fairly small, and the only major adjustment was for James Stewart, expecting him to do better than his original prediction, but as we all know he crashed out with a DNF.
The 250 predictions were not quite as accurate. 3 predictions were exact, but only 3 more were off by 1 or 2 spots. Out of the top 6 predicted riders, 5 of them finished in the top 6, with Adam Cianciarulo not finishing high enough and Alex Martin making the jump all the way up to 2nd:
Some notes for the Lower class:
Cianciarulo was one of the bigger misses (4th predicted vs 13th actual), however he did qualify with the 2nd best time, so it seems like something was up with his 13th place finish (12 / 11). He didn't get very good starts (21 & 18), so maybe that was it.
Shane McElrath was another big miss (11th predicted vs 23rd actual), and he had a crash/DFN in Moto 2, which hurt his overall ranking. But, he also had an 18th place finish in the first race, so it seems he was much slower than his prediction for Hangtown (although he qualified 10th).
Martin Davalos had a series of crashes, apparently, which lead to a very poor result for him (13th predicted vs 32nd actual).
Alex Martin's prediction is quite low (17th), mostly because his 2014 and 2013 results are dragging down what was a pretty good 250MX outdoor season in 2015. He surprised many by finishing 2nd, tying his career best -- in his career, he has only 1 overall finish in 2nd place (Budds Creek 2015), but he did have 6 finishes in the Top 5 last season.
The 250 class didn't have any Track Adjustments of note for Hangtown 250 riders. Jessy Nelson had a small downward adjustment, that didn't result in a change of spots for his prediction. He did finish one spot worse (6th) than his prediction before the Track Adjustment (5th). Matt Bisceglia had a large Track Adjustment, but he didn't end up riding and I haven't heard why.
Posted by: SagehenMacGyver47 ::: As always – Feedback welcomed
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