Forkner vs Ferrandis vs Osborne

The 250 class gave us another awesome race as Austin Forkner and Dylan Ferrandis finished within a second of each other. Zach Osborne had the leaders in sight for a large part of the race as well. 

I plotted out all three riders' lap times below. Ferrandis put in the most consistent fast times, but got a slower start than Forkner and Osborne. Forkner was able to get into the lead early and turned in several laps in the 49 second range, but also flirted with the 51 second line a few times which allowed Ferrandis to close in. Osborne lost precious time on laps 12 and 13, and then again at the end of the race on laps 19 and 20. 

At the post-race press conference Osborne attributed his struggles to the slick nature of the track. "In the beginning I felt pretty solid, and then maybe like halfway through I had a few mistakes and then Dylan got me and I did struggle a little bit. It’s just not quite my cup of tea when it’s a little bit slicker. "

Ferrandis, who never really got up to race pace last weekend following that wild first-turn crash, admitted he was "running out of oxygen" at times while chasing Forkner. He was very fast at mid race, but laps 14, 15 and 18 were costly (lappers could have been a factor, too). Credit to him for digging in for one last heater on lap 19, which got him back to Forkner's rear wheel. Austin held him off for the win--both riders admitted they were pretty tired. That's good racing!

The Rhythm

The sand section was probably the most talked about section of the Tampa track before the race weekend, but the long rhythm section after the start straight brought just as much excitement because the three fastest 450 riders (Musquin, Tomac, and Hill) all had different ways of attacking the section. 

I decided to time the footage from the main event to see which line was the fastest. Since going wide or staying tight in the corner before the rhythm was a huge part of the section I decided to start the timer at a red and black tough block at the entrance to the corner, and then stopped the timer once the rider's back wheel cleared the final jump.

Hill's big quad-quad line was the fastest, but it wasn't that much faster than Tomac's line of staying tight through the corner and tripling onto the tabletop in the middle of the section. Musquin's line was by far the slowest, and it was also the most used line by the 450 class. Take a look at each rider's time below. 

Musquin

Tomac

Hill

Chad Reed

Finally, Chad Reed made history in Tampa. He became the rider with the most premier class main event starts in history, clearing Mike LaRocco's record of 227 starts. Although he wasn't able to finish his record main event due to a bike problem, he was on pace to put in his best main event finish of the year. 

I'm only 24 years old and didn't start really watching supercross until 2004, so Reed has been a major player pretty much every single year since I started watching the races. Having watched most of his races I was curious to see the breakdown of each season to see how he got this record. 

Once he jumped up to the 450 class full-time in 2003 he put in seven straight seasons of lining up for each main event (Feld switched to a 17 race format in 2008) even after crashes like this one. Seasons like these are why Ralph Shaheen so often used the word "Gritty" when describing Chad. 

Then after his seven-season streak, Reed had a few up and down seasons after his rough year at Kawasaki in 2010. But in 2015 he made it to 16 main events and then 17 in both 2016 and 2017. 

We talked to Reed last week and he was clear that he didn't line up this year just to break the record as he feels he can still be competitive when healthy. Let's see if he can get the next "old guy" record for oldest supercross win later this year.