Supercross 2017: Arlington -- Predictions Review
2/13/2017
How did the "This Week" predictions do for Supercross week 6 at Arlington? I think you could probably answer that without looking. Riders' results last week were all over the place for a variety of reasons including at least two flat tires.
If there's any silver lining from the Top 10, it would be that the biggest misses were somewhat freak results. Eli Tomac had brake problem, Cooper Webb had a flat tire, Trey Canard was returning from injury, and Chad Reed also had a flat tire.
Stadium/Track Adjustments
Since the Stadium/Track Adjustment is still a bit of a work in progress (The MX Book goes through it in detail, with encouraging conclusions), I highlight the major ones each week to see if the riders' finishing spots were better or worse at the Supercross stadium -- that is, in line with the prediction or not.
Just like last week, there was 1 major Stadium/Track Adjustment and a few moderate ones for the 450's. Unlike last week, I wouldn't read too much into the results, although they did line up pretty well with the adjustments. I will list the 3 biggest to compare how the adjustment compared with the apparent effect of the stadium:
The largest Track Adjustment, for Malcolm Stewart, expected him to do 5 points better at AT&T Stadium than at the average track. Before the adjustment, he was predicted to earn 6 points (10.9 points after the adjustment), and he earned 11 -- a difference of 5 points. That's +5.0 (predicted effect) vs +5 (actual effect), so the adjustment was essentially correct.
Reed was predicted to do 1.2 points worse at AT&T Stadium than at the average track; because of his flat tire, he earned 12 fewer than predicted -- so he did worse, as predicted, but take that with a grain of salt.
Jason Anderson was predicted to do 0.9 points better at AT&T, and he did 0.2 points better. His result was technically in the correct direction, but much smaller. Because of the points structure at 2nd/3rd/4th he could only be 2.2 points better, 0.2 points better, or 1.8 points worse -- so it's hard to have a precise match in this case.
Not a lot to say about predicting Arlington's results, other than the race seemed to go haywire, as did the predictions. Next week in Minneapolis should be interesting as it's a fairly unique race that should provide quite a different environment than any of the California/Arizona/Texas sites.
Posted by: SagehenMacGyver47 ::: As always – Feedback welcomed
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