The first supercross race of the year is in the books, and that means we all get to make our wild predictions for the rest of the year. The 2018 version of Anaheim 1 was much softer than what we're used to seeing because of some refined dirt with sand added that stopped the blue groove from forming.

Marvin Musquin continued his hot streak from the off-season by edging out Jason Anderson and Justin Barcia for the 450SX win. In 250SX, Shane McElrath made his mark on the #deepfield by picking up the second Anaheim 1 win of his career.

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	22nd	52.575	2	52.973	Eli Tomac
2	3rd	53.018	2	54.415	Justin Barcia
3	1st	53.156	5	54.117	Marvin Musquin
4	2nd	53.340	5	54.184	Jason Anderson
5	5th	53.632	2	54.832	Weston Peick
6	4th	53.676	9	54.555	Ken Roczen
7	6th	53.758	14	54.872	Cole Seely
8	12th	53.920	8	55.439	Blake Baggett
9	10ths	54.324	17	55.376	Cooper Webb
10	8th	54.330	12	55.098	Broc Tickle
11	11th	54.419	7	55.525	Jeremy Martin
12	7th	54.489	7	55.182	Justin Brayton
13	9th	54.599	10	55.242	Josh Grant
14	13th	54.994	10	56.327	Vince Friese
15	14th	55.336	8	56.847	Tyler Bowers
16	17th	55.843	4	57.641	Ben LaMay
17	18th	55.848	3	58.072	Alex Ray
18	20th	56.053	7	57.582	Dakota Tedder
19	15th	56.067	13	57.493	Chad Reed
20	16th	56.116	4	57.054	Kyle Cunningham
21	19th	56.356	6	58.545	Matt Bisceglia
22	21st	57.015	4	1:00.189	Adam Enticknap

250SX Class Lap Times

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	1st	53.547	2	54.626	Shane McElrath
2	2nd	53.681	9	54.624	Aaron Plessinger
3	3rd	53.973	5	54.678	Adam Cianciarulo
4	6th	54.043	7	55.517	Mitchell Oldenburg
5	4th	54.100	7	54.833	Joey Savatgy
6	5th	54.478	9	55.481	Christian Craig
7	11th	54.506	8	55.679	Bradley Taft
8	7th	54.599	5	55.715	Justin Hill
9	8th	54.639	4	56.007	Chase Sexton
10	21st	54.701	5	55.543	Alex Martin
11	9th	54.985	9	56.243	Justin Cooper
12	10th	55.472	8	56.897	Kyle Chisholm
13	13th	55.693	4	57.249	Hayden Mellross
14	15th	55.736	5	58.239	Justin Hoeft
15	14th	55.936	4	57.512	Mitchell Harrison
16	12th	56.075	8	57.216	Dakota Alix
17	17th	56.889	5	1:00.003	Ryan Breece
18	19th	57.097	3	1:00.431	Jean Ramos
19	16th	57.113	5	58.923	Justin Starling
20	18th	57.247	4	59.351	Killian Auberson
21	20th	58.015	6	1:00.508	Brandan Leith
22	22nd	DNF	DNF	DNF	Phillip Nicoletti

Musquin vs Anderson

Musquin and Anderson, the two Baker's Factory boys, went 1-2 respectively at the season opener. Anderson was able to keep Musquin in sight for the entire race, and even started to reel in the Frenchman in the later stages. As you can see by their lap times below, from lap 16 on, Musquin's lap times began to vary while Anderson was able to turn in multiple laps right around the 54-second mark.

Jumping Marvin

One of the questions about Musquin coming into 2018 was, "Will this be the season he figures out the whoops?" This past Saturday, we saw Musquin use two different techniques in the two separate whoop pads. In the first section he skimmed them like normal, and in the second set before the finish line he resorted to jumping through them, going triple-triple-double into the turn.

This technique has been praised by some and criticized by others because it's difficult to do well and often isn't as fast as skimming the top of the whoops. I wanted to see if Musquin was losing any time to Anderson in this section of the track, and for the most part, they were about equal, with Anderson gaining .576 seconds on Musquin over the course of the entire race. (Note: four-tenths of that chunk came on the last lap.) Check out their times for the fourth section of the track below.

Musquin's Segment Four Time	Anderson's Segment Four Time	Difference
15.039	15.794	-0.755
14.21	14.884	-0.674
13.94	13.957	-0.017
13.83	13.77	+0.06
13.928	13.959	-0.031
14.181	13.782	+0.399
13.962	13.974	-0.012
14.066	14.229	-0.163
14.171	14.091	+0.08
14.034	13.937	+0.097
14.329	14.17	+0.159
14.106	14.184	-0.078
13.808	14.151	-0.343
14.184	14.647	-0.463
14.072	14.101	-0.029
14.248	13.88	+0.368
14.903	14.001	+0.902
14.336	13.888	+0.448
13.95	14.047	-0.097
14.244	14.442	-0.198
14.285	14.013	+0.272
14.253	14.072	+0.181
14.312	14.323	-0.011
15.258	14.777	+0.481
Total Difference		+0.576

Tomac's Tough Start

Coming into the season, Eli Tomac was pegged as the title favorite by many, but his season didn't get off to the best start. He logged a 22nd place finish after pulling out of the race with a sore shoulder due to a crash while leading.

This isn't the first time Tomac has struggled at Anaheim 1 on the 450. In 2014, he got together with Jake Weimer in a rhythm section during the heat race, which forced him to miss the night show and the next weekend in Phoenix.

In 2015, he crashed while running in sixth on the first lap and was slow to get back on the back. He finished 20th.

He seemed to get something figured out, though, as the next two years he made it out of Angel Stadium with solid fourth- and fifth-place finishes.

In the end, Tomac heads into the next round 25 points behind Musquin. He's no stranger to working himself out of a hole, though, as we saw last year in both Monster Energy Supercross and Lucas Oil Pro Motocross. Provided he's able to compete at close to 100 percent, we should be in for a good comeback attempt.

Also, if you were curious how much time Tomac spent trying to get his pants buckled, we clocked it 11.64 seconds. It's just an example of how even the most simple task can become difficult in a high stress environment.