Perhaps the biggest storyline heading into Daytona had nothing to do with any of the riders. Instead, the focus shifted to the format for the night show changing to be based on laps rather than time. In the end, it did give us more racing.
If the 450 main event had been 20 minutes plus one lap we would have only gotten 19 laps instead of 20, and if you tally up the total amount of on track time throughout the night show, we got to see about five more minutes of racing by using the lap format. Ryan Dungey can also thank the change as he was able to utilize that one extra lap and pass Cole Seely to take fourth place.
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.
450SX Class Lap Times
| Lap Rank | Finish | Best Lap | On Lap | Avg Lap Time | Rider |
| 1 | 1st | 1:11.671 | 8 | 1:13.564 | Eli Tomac |
| 2 | 2nd | 1:11.736 | 8 | 1:14.518 | Jeremy Martin |
| 3 | 3rd | 1:12.413 | 5 | 1:14.685 | Jason Anderson |
| 4 | 6th | 1:13.455 | 11 | 1:15.697 | Chad Reed |
| 5 | 4th | 1:13.620 | 14 | 1:14.947 | Ryan Dungey |
| 6 | 7th | 1:13.692 | 7 | 1:15.253 | Blake Baggett |
| 7 | 5th | 1:13.709 | 5 | 1:15.202 | Cole Seely |
| 8 | 15th | 1:13.787 | 5 | 1:16.521 | Marvin Musquin |
| 9 | 8th | 1:14.007 | 7 | 1:16.204 | Josh Grant |
| 10 | 9th | 1:14.085 | 5 | 1:16.590 | Justin Brayton |
| 11 | 10th | 1:14.161 | 5 | 1:16.448 | Mike Alessi |
| 12 | 16th | 1:14.322 | 5 | 1:16.824 | Malcolm Stewart |
| 13 | 17th | 1:14.552 | 5 | 1:18.207 | Jake Weimer |
| 14 | 19th | 1:14.828 | 5 | 1:18.320 | Vince Friese |
| 15 | 13th | 1:14.945 | 7 | 1:16.762 | Dean Wilson |
| 16 | 14th | 1:14.951 | 5 | 1:16.859 | Broc Tickle |
| 17 | 11th | 1:15.140 | 5 | 1:16.518 | Justin Barcia |
| 18 | 12th | 1:15.168 | 7 | 1:16.762 | Davi Millsaps |
| 19 | 18th | 1:17.610 | 6 | 1:20.113 | Kyle Chisholm |
| 20 | 20th | 1:18.282 | 8 | 1:22.332 | Nick Schmidt |
| 21 | 21st | 1:19.589 | 5 | 1:22.978 | AJ Catanzaro |
| 22 | 22nd | 1:21.187 | 3 | 1:27.310 | Scott Champion |
250SX Class Lap Times
| Lap Rank | Finish | Best Lap | On Lap | Avg Lap Time | Rider | |
| 1 | 1st | 1:13.655 | 5 | 1:14.439 | Adam Cianciarulo | |
| 2 | 5th | 1:13.788 | 9 | 1:15.595 | Zach Osborne | |
| 3 | 3rd | 1:13.849 | 13 | 1:15.289 | Dylan Ferrandis | |
| 4 | 2nd | 1:13.991 | 3 | 1:14.683 | Joey Savatgy | |
| 5 | 8th | 1:14.160 | 3 | 1:16.943 | Alex Martin | |
| 6 | 4th | 1:14.241 | 8 | 1:15.287 | Jordon Smith | |
| 7 | 6th | 1:14.605 | 5 | 1:16.505 | Lorenzo Locurcio | |
| 8 | 7th | 1:15.283 | 3 | 1:16.681 | Kyle Cunningham | |
| 9 | 22nd | 1:15.352 | 4 | 1:18.750 | Mitchell Harrison | |
| 10 | 9th | 1:16.180 | 7 | 1:17.821 | Luke Renzland | |
| 11 | 14th | 1:16.181 | 4 | 1:18.419 | Christian Craig | |
| 12 | 19th | 1:16.543 | 4 | 1:22.312 | Jerry Robin | |
| 13 | 16th | 1:16.647 | 11 | 1:18.822 | Fredrik Noren | |
| 14 | 10th | 1:16.655 | 4 | 1:18.430 | Dakota Alix | |
| 15 | 12th | 1:16.689 | 4 | 1:18.470 | Anthony Rodriguez | |
| 16 | 13th | 1:16.771 | 12 | 1:18.430 | Cole Thompson | |
| 17 | 15th | 1:16.938 | 11 | 1:18.676 | Jesse Wentland | |
| 18 | 11th | 1:17.219 | 12 | 1:18.498 | Gannon Audette | |
| 19 | 17th | 1:18.097 | 7 | 1:20.410 | Josh Cartwright | |
| 20 | 18th | 1:19.318 | 8 | 1:21.025 | Tony Archer | |
| 21 | 21st | 1:19.543 | 5 | 1:23.398 | Kyle Swanson | |
| 22 | 20th | 1:19.546 | 5 | 1:23.250 | Dylan Merriam | |
The Top Three
The first thing that jumped out to me when looking at the lap times for the top three was how much Jeremy Martin's times dropped off once he was passed by Tomac. For the first half of the race he was in the 1:11 to 1:13 range and then immediately jumped up to the 1:15s once he was passed. This drop in times is pretty understandable since Martin is a full-time 250 rider on the West Coast this year and this was just a one-ff race on a 450 for him. Also take a look at Jason Anderson's times from lap six to 10. During those laps he passed Cole Seely, Chad Reed, and Justin Brayton to move his way into third.
Dungey vs. Seely
I wanted to see how Ryan Dungey compared to Cole Seely throughout the entire race, so I graphed out both of their distances behind Tomac for every lap. You can see Dungey's distance from Tomac slowly grows while he battles his way through the pack, but eventually rounds off as he gets a clear track and Tomac manages the race out front. Seely's distance from Tomac also grows steadily throughout the race, but unlike Dungey, his line doesn't round off towards the end and he gets passed.
AC vs. Savatgy
In the 250 Class, Joey Savatgy and Adam Cianciarulo pretty much went blow for blow with their lap times. It's amazing how consistent they were able to stay throughout the race on a constantly evolving track like Daytona. On the last lap Savatgy was just 0.7 seconds behind Cianciarulo before he logged a 1:17.487 which was 2.795 seconds slower than AC.
An interesting thing to note is that Cianciarulo chose to run a sand tire while Savatgy chose to use his normal supercross tire. They didn't show it on TV much, but when they went through the deep left-hand sand corner you can actually see how much more of a drive AC was able to get out of the deep sand.
