Spring Creek "This-Week" Predictions Review
7/18/2016
How did the "This-Week" predictions do for MX outdoors in Week 8 at Spring
Creek? Ken Roczen reestablished himself at the top of the list, but Marvin Musquin put in his best 450 finish yet, taking 2nd (well, tied
for 2nd in points with Eli Tomac):
Major misses:
Weston Peick crashing and causing Broc Tickle to crash caused DNF's for both of them. Heath Harrison also DNF'd the motos.
Ben LaMay finished 16th in Moto 1, which was fairly close to his prediction of 12th, but he DNF'd Moto 2, dropping him to 20th overall.
Benny Bloss had a very good day, showing further improvement with an 8th place finish (compared to prediction of 13th).
Justin Brayton and Andrew Short cruised in at 8th and 11th, respectively, which were both season highs for them and much better than their predictions.
The 450's had notable Track Adjustments for Trey Canard and Heath Harrison -- each were supposed to earn 4 more points than their non-adjusted prediction. Canard was returning from injury, and he earned 4 fewer points that expected. Not sure we can read much into that. Harrison had the DNF mentioned above, which certainly doesn't match the predicted adjustment.
250 Predictions
The Lites class predictions had some good and some bad. The good was that 5 of the top 6 riders and 8 of the top 10 were correct, though in different order. The bad is that only 2 riders in the Top 20 were exact picks -- if you count Cooper Webb as tied for #1 ;)
The biggest problem, in my opinion, is Alex Martin being forecasted in 6th when he actually got 3rd and could have easily been 1st or 2nd. Austin Forkner had some crashes in the second moto, dropping him to 13th and way off his prediction. Luke Renzland had a 9 / 12 for 21 points and tied for 8th -- he's been in the teens the last few weeks, but the numbers haven't seemed to catch up yet. His laptimes have not been particularly fast in terms of his average over the whole season, so I'll have to look into the early season numbers that may be weighing down his predictions.
The 250 class several Track Adjustments had mixed results:
The Martin brothers were expected to do better than their predictions without the adjustment, and they both did.
Kyle Cunningham was expected to earn 2 fewer points at Spring Creek than his prediction before the track adjustment, yet he earned 11 more than predicted.
Joey Savatgy was supposed to earn 2 more points than before the Track Adjustment, but he earned 2 fewer.
Once the MX season ends, I'll review all of the Track/Location adjustments from outdoor and Supercross to see just how effective (or ineffective) they've been in terms of predictive value from week to week. In my mind they've been somewhat helpful but far from consistent, but we'll see.
Posted by: SagehenMacGyver47 ::: As always – Feedback welcomed
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