Sign of the (Lap) Times: San Diego

Testing is one of the main things that ramps up when a 250 rider moves to the 450 class. A lot of 250 teams just hand the bike over to the 250 riders and tell them to race it, because a lot of young riders don’t even know how to test. Plus, 450s are much more dependent on setup then 250s. Cole Seely explained how some of that process is working with him this year. “I’m learning—because I’m actually a really good test rider—I just know that because I ride the bike so much that if you change one thing on the thing I’m going to feel it. I can usually tell them exactly. They always throw me into it blind and I can usually tell them that they went softer or stiffer or slower or whatever,” he told us. Although Seely can tell what the bike is doing, he’s still letting the team guide him. “It’s cool. I don’t know what I want or what’s going to make me go faster, so it’s cool to try those things, take what they have and learn with it, and also what they have to offer as far as engine packages too. It’s pretty crazy. I think the bike was good, now it’s becoming great. It’s been really cool to be a part of the process.”

Team Honda HRC was pleased to host HRC Vice President Shuhei Nakamoto for round six, and following the daytime qualifying program, Mr. Nakamoto took time out of his day to meet with members of the media at the team’s hospitality rig. “HRC’s dream is to win all of the major championships,” Nakamoto said. “In motocross, this series is the most important, so that’s why we started this activity again.”

Yoshimura Suzuki’s Blake Baggett continues to impress early in the supercross season. Baggett, who had to go through the LCQ—“It was quite a bit of a scramble, but my team came through and rebuilt the back of the bike after we got hit. I was the last one in through the LCQ and that gave us the last gate pick for the main, but at least we made it.”—made up a ton of ground early on his way to seventh. “I made some quick moves right away when everybody was still bunched up,” he said in a team statement. I think I was in fifth and was catching [Chad] Reed and I just made an error. I landed sitting down and just gave it a little too much front brake and lost the front wheel.” It may have been a much better finish, but Baggett had to ride in first gear the last four laps. Can you do all the jumps in first gear? “You just hold it wide open. It’s enough…but barely [laughs],” he joked with Jason Weigandt after the race. 

In San Diego, we finally saw hints of the Davi Millsaps we expected to see all year long. He was much quicker in practice than the last few weeks, and was up front in his heat race, and also in the main until he had two crashes. “There are definitely some positives to take out of tonight,” said Millsaps. “I was riding up front and charging before I ran into some bad luck. Things are getting better every week and I'm looking forward to Dallas.” Millsaps tells us he has been sick for a long time—months, he says, not weeks—and hasn’t been able to log  twenty-lap motos on the test track in a long time. He’s finally over the illness and can start riding and training like usual, but it will be awhile before he has all of his fitness back.

Broc Tickle returned in San Diego after a back injury forced him to sit out Anaheim 3. He picked up right where he left off, finishing ninth. “I’m sore but pretty stoked with the way everything turned out,” said Tickle in a team statement. “I really wasn’t feeling it from the get go. I kind of struggled with the track all day. I felt like I was riding fast but I really wasn’t. That’s not normally a good thing. So I just needed to try and get the best start I could in the main and weasel my way around to get in a good position to finish in the top ten. That was my goal after having missed last weekend.”

Brett Metcalfe acquitted himself well in six races on the Dirt Candy Suzuki team, but the Aussie veteran is now hanging up his supercross boots and ready to prep for this summer’s Canadian Motocross Championship. Metty finished eleventh at San Diego, his best result of the year. His teammate Ronnie Stewart will race the whole season, and made his first main event of the year at San Diego.

It might only be small progress, but this was the best race of the year for Discount Tire/TwoTwo Motorsports' Josh Grant, with a twelftth. Grant, you might have seen, was knocked off the track in a semi race by his boss, Chad Reed, and had to go to the LCQ to make the main. Reed says Grant has made some major bike changes. His previous best was a lowly eighteenth, so this is a step in the right direction. 

450SX Class Best Lap Times

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	In Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	1	55.568	2	56.818	Trey Canard
2	10	56.214	7	57.779	Jason Anderson
3	3	56.306	4	57.153	Ryan Dungey
4	5	56.328	5	57.714	Eli Tomac
5	2	56.377	7	56.952	Ken Roczen
6	4	56.417	8	57.629	Chad Reed
7	7	56.688	5	58.278	Blake Baggett
8	6	57.011	11	57.888	Cole Seely
9	8	57.018	7	58.665	Andrew Short
10	20	57.099	4	1:01.400	Davi Millsaps
11	9	57.419	5	58.449	Broc Tickle
12	15	57.671	4	59.126	Jake Weimer
13	11	57.693	8	59.416	Brett Metcalfe
14	12	58.018	10	59.163	Josh Grant
15	13	58.171	6	59.625	Mike Alessi
16	14	58.224	4	1:00.006	Phil Nicoletti
17	17	58.812	5	1:00.516	Nick Wey
18	21	58.834	4	1:02.643	Kyle Partridge
19	18	58.995	4	1:00.568	Jimmy Albertson
20	16	59.034	2	1:00.296	Kyle Chisholm
21	19	59.257	5	1:00.817	Killy Rusk
22	22	59.257	5	1:05.544	Ronnie Stewart

Check out those stats above. Kenny Roczen proves here that being fast for one lap isn't as critical as being fast on all the laps, as he nearly won the race despite only having the fifth fastest time.

250SX Class Best Lap Times

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	In Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	3	56.274	2	58.299	Tyler Bowers
2	2	56.555	5	57.908	Shane Mcelrath
3	1	56.579	4	57.760	Cooper Webb
4	21	56.652	2	56.652	Malcolm Stewart
5	6	57.263	4	58.943	Zach Osborne
6	5	57.327	4	58.598	Alex Martin
7	4	57.555	5	58.274	Josh Hansen
8	8	57.572	7	58.852	Jessy Nelson
9	7	57.658	4	58.711	Zach Bell
10	14	57.828	6	58.757	Aaron Plessinger
11	15	58.168	12	59.085	Matt Bisceglia
12	10	58.361	7	59.474	Chris Alldredge
13	11	58.464	5	59.736	Cole Martinez
14	16	58.503	5	1:00.551	Austin Politelli
15	13	58.549	7	59.709	Zack Freeberg
16	9	58.566	5	59.289	Tommy Hahn
17	12	58.834	11	59.758	Jackson Richardson
18	17	59.794	8	1:00.530	Trevor Reis
19	18	1:00.010	10	1:00.902	Brandon Scharer
20	20	1:00.487	3	1:02.205	Ryan Breece
21	19	1:00.557	5	1:01.799	Mike Horban
22	DNS	-	-	-	Justin Hill

Just like in the 450s with Roczen, Cooper Webb proved you don't have to be the fastest on one lap to challenge for the win. Is so many ways, this race looked to be Tyler Bowers' for the taking, but then he got tired (more on Bowers below). Check out the chart. You'll see that Bowers lost the pace at about lap eight, while Webb basically stayed steady and let the race come to him.

Webb vs. Bowers

Lap	Webb	Bowers
1.	---	---
2.	57.599	56.274
3.	57.039	56.791
4.	56.579	56.934
5.	57.343	56.906
6.	56.969	57.278
7.	56.812	56.978
8.	57.216	57.693
9.	58.429	59.944
10.	57.744	1:00.978
11.	57.320	59.217
12.	57.894	58.910
13.	57.807	58.410
14.	59.612	59.118
15.	1:00.290	1:00.759

How fast was Trey Canard early in the race? He had four of the five fastest recorded laps in the 450 main event. Dude's on it!

Top Times 450 Main Event 

Rider	Lap	Time
Trey Canard	2	55.568
Trey Canard	4	55.596
Trey Canard	5	56.048
Jason Anderson	7	56.214
Trey Canard	6	56.232

Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Tyler Bowers was staring his first win of 2015 down in San Diego, but faded toward the end. “I've been battling illness the last couple of weeks and I haven't had a lot of time on the bike. That caught up to me today. I was trying to hold on and get the win but I just couldn't. This break in the schedule is going to help and I'm going to be ready when the West Coast season picks up again.”

Josh Hansen had his best race of the season in San Diego with a fourth. While Hansen hasn’t approached a win this season, he does have five top-tens in six rounds.

A week after leading at Anaheim 3, Lucas Oil/Troy Lee Designs KTM’s Jessy Nelson finished eighth in San Diego. The main reason, says Nelson, was his starts. “I had a little bit of a rough weekend and my starts weren’t there. The championship is pretty much out of my grasp at this point. We’ll use the break to really focus on preparing for outdoors. When we come back, my goal is to get back on the box and close that points gap as much as I can.”

Red Bull KTM’s Justin Hill was a title favorite before the 250SX West campaign began, but it hasn’t gone to plan, besides a few heat race wins. He won another heat at San Diego, but then got his leg run over by Shane McElrath coming out of the start. He tried riding but realized in about three turns that something was wrong, and pulled off. X-rays at the track showed nothing is broken, but Hill told us he’s broken enough bones before to know there might be an issue. He’ll get more X-rays and tests done this week to survey the damage.

Things weren’t good for Josh Hill either, who debuted for the CycleTrader.com/Rock River Yamaha team, but got terrible starts in every qualifying race and failed to make the main. Josh has only made two of six mains this year. 

San Diego is a local race for a bunch of the Southern California based riders, so it was cool to see Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Wil Hahn, Red Bull KTM’s Dean Wilson and Autotrader.com/Toyota Yamaha’s Weston Peick on hand to greet fans and sign autographs. For the second week in a row, Hahn even helped the live announcers with some track breakdowns during the night. 

Matt Bisceglia struggled in his second race back from a concussion. "I'm really disappointed with myself," Bisceglia said in a team statement. "My result tonight was more of a product of the heat races than the main event itself. I had a bad start in the first heat and then crashed, so I had to go to the next qualifier, which I was able to win, but by that point my gate pick was way back. I ended up like third from the end in the main.” Bisceglia has shown improved speed in his second pro supercross season, but he’s been all over the map, consistency-wise. "We've got eight weeks until the 250SX West guys race again, and I plan on working extremely hard on my starts and overall riding. Everyone is so good at this level, and if you don't have a complete day and put yourself out front it's hard to do well."