After a nice weekend off, the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship came storming back with the Spring Creek National in Millville, Minnesota. 

The track received massive amounts of rain in the days leading up to the event, but the track crew got it turned around for the motos in the afternoon. The track got very rough and it seemed to spread the riders out pretty quickly. Because of the gaps in speed, there wasn't much action up front aside from Zach Osborne's pass on Joey Savatgy for the lead in the second moto

That doesn't mean there aren't interesting things to look at, though. First, let’s dive into the lap data to figure out how these races were won and lost with this week’s Sign of the Lap Times. First, our traditional lap time charts.

450 Moto 1

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	1st	2:24.800	4	2:28.588	Marvin Musquin
2	2nd	2:25.796	8	2:29.148	Eli Tomac
3	3rd	2:27.612	2	2:30.581	Dean Wilson
4	5th	2:27.867	2	2:31.212	Justin Barcia
5	7th	2:28.005	2	2:33.019	Christian Craig
6	4th	2:28.291	3	2:30.496	Cooper Webb
7	6th	2:28.467	4	2:31.374	Blake Baggett
8	8th	2:28.737	2	2:33.879	Cole Seely
9	9th	2:28.960	7	2:33.787	Henry Miller
10	16th	2:29.004	4	2:34.049	Justin Bogle

450 Moto 2

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	2nd	2:25.579	4	2:31.016	Blake Baggett
2	1st	2:25.603	4	2:29.988	Marvin Musquin
3	5th	2:26.916	4	2:33.603	Eli Tomac
4	8th	2:28.496	3	2:36.256	Justin Barcia
5	4th	2:28.568	3	2:33.256	Martin Davalos
6	3rd	2:28.584	6	2:32.739	Dean Wilson
7	6th	2:29.154	3	2:34.075	Cole Seely
8	33rd	2:29.342	2	2:33.708	Justin Bogle
9	9th	2:29.433	4	2:36.113	Cooper Webb
10	10th	2:30.211	5	2:36.213	Fredrik Noren

250 Moto 1

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	1st	2:25.060	2	2:30.743	Joey Savatgy
2	2nd	2:26.020	2	2:31.196	Alex Martin
3	5th	2:27.510	2	2:33.078	RJ Hampshire
4	8th	2:27.717	3	2:35.536	Zach Osborne
5	3rd	2:28.064	2	2:31.717	Aaron Plessinger
6	4th	2:28.544	2	2:31.977	Jeremy Martin
7	6th	2:28.860	3	2:33.340	Adam Cianciarulo
8	10th	2:29.202	3	2:35.508	Steven Clarke
9	12th	2:29.703	2	2:34.291	Chase Sexton
10	36th	2:30.324	2	2:36.720	Bradley Taft

250 Moto 2

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	1st	2:27.704	2	2:30.940	Zach Osborne
2	12th	2:27.755	2	2:36.967	Aaron Plessinger
3	2nd	2:28.719	4	2:32.169	Joey Savatgy
4	3rd	2:28.989	3	2:32.512	Shane McElrath
5	5th	2:29.025	4	2:33.349	Jeremy Martin
6	8th	2:29.371	2	2:34.967	Dylan Ferrandis
7	4th	2:29.390	3	2:32.306	Alex Martin
8	6th	2:29.427	2	2:34.897	Adam Cianciarulo
9	10th	2:30.958	2	2:36.637	Nick Gaines
10	7th	2:30.390	3	2:36.967	RJ Hampshire

Tomac vs Musquin Moto 1

When Eli Tomac got into second place on lap seven, he was about 22 seconds behind Marvin Musquin. On lap eight, Tomac was able to cut into the lead by five seconds to get the lead down to 17.

It looks like the time gained by Tomac on that lap can be attributed to a mistake made by Musquin, though. Taking a look at the individual lap times for Musquin, he ran a 2:31.183 on lap eight, which was about four seconds slower than his previous lap. The next three laps, Musquin went 2:28.777, 2:28.483, and 2:27.739. On a track as soft as Millville was, that amount of time can easily be lost by getting a poor drive going up a hill or cross rutting coming into a corner and losing all your momentum. Take a look at the gap between Tomac and Musquin for the entire race below. 

J-Mart's Shortcut

There was a little bit of controversy in the second 250 moto. Early in the race Jeremy Martin went off the track and cut off a large section as he re-entered. He didn't gain any positions, but he also didn't lose any of the positions he would have lost if he had re-entered at the same place he left the track. 

I decided to see how much time J-Mart saved with his shortcut, and after timing a couple different laps with my phone, and then overlaying a timer on the lap before his mistake, he ended up saving about 12 seconds. 

The Whoops

It's easy to forget how important and how long the sand whoops are at Millville because they've been around for so long and the riders can get through them so quickly. With the help of Google Maps' measuring tool I was able to put the sand whoops into perspective and provide you guys with some numbers. (Note: this scan of the track was taken before the new turn was added after the whoops. The actual whoops weren't any shorter or longer, though)

Millville is about 1.19 miles long, or 6,283 feet. The whoops measure out to about 900 feet in length when you include both sides. In the end, about 14 percent of the track is made up of nasty sand whoops that pound the riders lap after lap. Getting through this section efficiently plays a huge part in being able to stay fresh at the end of a hot summer day in southern Minnesota.