Pro MX Outdoor - 2016 Full-Season Predictions After Week 8
7/19/2016
Now that Spring Creek is in the books, what's changed with the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship predictions? We're two-thirds of the way home,
so at this point there aren't likely any big swings in the rankings, other than if there are significant injures. For instance, Weston Peick's crash
and 0 points from Spring Creek drop him 3 spots to #11.
450MX CLASS
Ken Roczen's lead continues to grow, and we expect him to take 187 of the remaining 200 points. That would mean he doesn't finish 1st approximately 3 out of 8 motos, which unbelievably might be selling him short. But at the extremes, models like these are going to err toward the middle.
Eli Tomac, for better or worse, cemented his place in 2nd, as he can neither catch Roczen nor be caught by Marvin Musquin, barring injury. Musquin went from "very likely" holding on to 3rd to "almost definitely", with Justin Barcia not expected to gain ground the rest of the way unless something unusual happens.
With the DNF and 0 points for Broc Tickle due to Peick's crash, Chrisophe Pourcel is now predicted in 5th, and is knocking on the door, 7 points behind Barcia. The projections see Barcia pulling away and maintaining 4th, but all season the results for Barcia have not lived up to the numbers' expectations.
Speaking of Barcia's performance relative to the predictions, one major component of those predictions is the riders' laptimes from the current season. Seems like that would be helpful for show this input and how it compares between the riders -- here are the 30 riders with the best times relative to the average in their races:
For example, Justin Barcia's laptimes have been 7.4 seconds faster than the average laptimes of all riders in his races, while Christophe Pourcel has been 5.5 seconds faster than average. There are some inconsistencies in there due to crashes and the fact that some riders don't ride the full number of laps -- avoiding laps at the very end of the race that would probably be slower than their previous ones -- but overall the averages are true to what's happened. Now that we're so far along in the season, factoring in the adjustment for riders who are dealing with injures becomes relatively minor. Only a few riders are affected enough to lose positions: 
Both projections together: 
250MX CLASS Even though Jeremy Martin "won" last week, he didn't gain any real points, which limits how much he closed the gap behind Cooper Webb: 
Austin Forkner drops a couple spots with his poor showing (relatively speaking, that is) at Spring Creek, but he and Zach Osborne + Aaron Plessinger are in a very close race for 5th. The 250 predictions also use 2016 lap times as a major component -- the Top 30
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