There has been a long list of changes made to the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship this year, like Saturday racing, new class names, live and network television coverage, sponsor logos on the side panels… the list goes on. But another, less noticed change was made in an attempt to align our sport up a little more closely with the stick and ball sports that dominate the sports media. Besides results and a press release, MX Sports and AMA Pro Racing churn out motocross box scores from each round of the tour.
The box scores track series points, overall wins, moto wins, average finish, laps led, holeshots and average qualifiying position. It’s not unlike tracking points, rebounds and assists in basketball, or at bats, hits, home runs and runs batted in on a baseball stat line. In the future, the MX box scores will also track each riders average start position on lap one, and other refinements will probably be coming, as this is a first-year effort. But already, some interesting stats pop out:
In the 450 class, Chad Reed leads the point standings, but he doesn’t have the most laps led. Who does? Mike Alessi? Josh Grant? Nope, it’s actually Ivan Tedesco who has led the most, with 57 laps out front, compared to 49 for Grant, 41 for Reed and 52 for Alessi. Tedesco also has the most holeshots with five—which no doubt helped in the lap total.
But another oddity jumps out in that Tedesco lies third in points, ahead of Grant, but actually has a higher average finishing position—7.29 to Grant’s 6.14.
In the 250 class, note that Trey Canard still has the fourth-highest average finish of 6.88, based on solid rides until he was injured at High Point. Canard is tenth in the standings. And as you would expect from two riders so closely matched in points, Ryan Dungey and Christophe Pourcel are nearly dead-even in every other category. Pourcel’s average finish is 2.79 compared to Dungey’s 2.86, and his average qualifying position is 1, while Dungey is two. Dungey has three overall wins while Pourcel has two, but Pourcel has seven motos wins while Dungey has six. Any way you slice it, these two are close.
Of course, these stats could all change dramatically after this weekend’s race at Washougal. Remember to stop by Allisports for the box scores after each race.
