We might not have seen a great battle for the lead in either class at the Indianapolis Supercross, but there was still plenty of action happening behind the leaders. 

In 250SX, Indy marked the first 250 East/West Showdown of the season, where both classes competed head to head and created the potential for large points swings. We almost saw that as Zach Osborne and Aaron Plessinger both got terrible starts and had to charge their way through the pack to salvage points. 

In 450SX, Marvin Musquin won by just under 30 seconds, and it was the largest margin of victory since Ricky Carmichael won the 2006 Daytona Supercross by 33.260 seconds over Chad Reed. And Eli Tomac continued his unpredictable season as he crashed big halfway through the main event. 

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 — Main Event — Lap Times

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	15th	44.464	6	47.170	Eli Tomac
2	1st	44.470	5	46.754	Marvin Musquin
3	10th	45.461	6	47.762	Blake Baggett
4	5th	45.475	7	47.317	Broc Tickle
5	22nd	45.520	9	47.813	Weston Peick
6	3rd	45.561	7	47.784	Justin Brayton
7	2nd	45.607	7	47.767	Dean Wilson
8	6th	45.979	9	48.261	Malcolm Stewart
9	4th	46.029	6	47.477	Jason Anderson
10	7th	46.197	2	47.841	Cooper Webb
11	11th	46.249	2	48.893	Tyler Bowers
12	16th	46.455	4	48.671	Christian Craig
13	8th	46.687	9	48.837	Benny Bloss
14	12th	46.767	4	49.418	Kyle Cunningham
15	14th	47.037	6	49.698	Cedric Soubeyras
16	9th	47.041	5	49.055	Chad Reed
17	13th	47.386	5	49.744	Vince Friese
18	19th	48.810	6	52.450	Cody Vanbuskirk
19	17th	48.900	4	51.592	Ben LaMay
20	20th	49.051	11	52.044	Carlen Gardner
21	21st	49.447	6	54.045	Adam Enticknap
22	18th	49.567	6	52.125	Dylan Merriam

250SX Class — Main Event — Lap Times

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider	Region
1	3rd	46.211	7	47.694	Luke Renzland	East
2	7th	46.297	13	47.749	Zach Osborne	East
3	4th	46.319	7	47.839	Jordon Smith	East
4	1st	46.398	5	47.503	Jeremy Martin	East
5	2nd	46.516	7	47.495	Adam Cianciarulo	West
6	5th	46.577	10	47.654	Aaron Plessinger	West
7	6th	46.625	8	47.926	Austin Forkner	East
8	8th	47.162	7	48.334	Kyle Peters	East
9	15th	47.317	2	49.630	Anthony Rodriguez	East
10	21st	47.395	4	48.115	Chase Sexton	West
11	22nd	47.506	6	48.994	Hayden Mellross	West
12	10th	47.566	4	48.930	Joey Savatgy	West
13	14th	47.637	9	49.223	Blake Wharton	West
14	9th	47.656	14	48.362	Phil Nicoletti	West
15	11th	47.658	3	49.184	Mitchell Harrison	West
16	12th	47.870	7	49.049	Kyle Chisholm	West
17	13th	47.852	14	49.092	Shane McElrath	West
18	20th	48.118	12	48.819	Sean Cantrell	East
19	16th	48.291	5	49.270	Brandon Hartranft	East
20	18th	48.613	9	51.041	Jacob Williamson	East
21	19th	48.619	6	51.625	Thomas Ramette	East
22	17th	48.813	6	48.334	Justin Starling	West

Musquin's Massive Victory

Just one week after Eli Tomac's dominating 20.721 second victory in St. Louis, Musquin had a "hold my beer" moment and backed him up with a 29.349 second victory, thanks in large part to Tomac pushing him at the beginning of the race and then going down around the halfway point. After the race, Musquin commented on Tomac's crash and how hard it is to keep pushing with such a large lead.

"Obviously, you can say Tomac crashed, but he was still behind me and I was ready for a battle. That’s a bummer for the fans to see that, but I’ll take it. I was up there and riding my own race. To be honest, when Tomac went down after that, it was a big gap. It’s hard to keep pushing, but at the same time, you don’t want to make mistakes. I played it safe until the end."

Take a look at how Musquin's lead grew throughout the main event over Dean Wilson who finished in second, a career-best for him. 

Tomac

Tomac's strange season, which is starting to become reminiscent of James Stewart's 2014 season, continues as he found himself on the ground again after hounding Musquin for the first half of the race. There wasn't any footage of the crash on the TV broadcast, but luckily a fan caught the replay that played inside the stadium. 

It looks like he took a pretty hard shot to the chest as he cased a quad in the middle of a rhythm. He sat on the side of the track for just over a minute before getting back on his bike. 

Tomac has taken some criticism by the message board heroes in the past for not gutting out rides after having a crash, so it was good to see him get back on his bike and lay down some lap times that were close to what Musquin was doing. You can see after his crash on lap 13 that it took him a few laps to get going, but he eventually started putting in consistent laps in the 47-second range. 

Plessinger and Osborne

Indianapolis was the first round of 2018 where we got to see both 250SX coasts compete against each other, and both the East and West Region points leaders got terrible starts in the 250 main event. Osborne and Plessinger both got hung up on a Tuff Block dragged onto the start straight by Adam Cianciarulo's back wheel.

Both riders got going at the very back of the pack, and Aaron Plessinger made moves quickly while Osborne struggled to make passes as fast as the youth GNCC racer. I wanted to see how their lap times compared coming through the field, as it seemed like Plessinger was having a much easier time even though they finished just two positions apart.

It's true that Plessinger found his groove much faster than Osborne and was able to pick riders off while they were still grouped together, but once the race settled down, the two were actually pretty close in times. Osborne also logged his second fastest lap of the race on the very last lap—no doubt focused on getting past Austin Forkner, who was just ahead of him.

After the race, Osborne said, "To come out dead last after the Tuff Block came in front of me, it sucked. I was pretty bummed. I looked over maybe six or seven minutes into the main and Austin was still seven or eight bikes in front of me. I was like, all right, it’s time to grind now. To come back to seventh and have a decent main event was pretty good. I feel like all in all, I salvaged decent and rode okay.”

Lots of Laps

The lap times for both classes were right in the mid-40 second range for most of the night, and that meant they burned a bunch of laps over the course of the night. In the main event alone, the 450SX class turned 27 laps. 

It's been over a year since supercross switched to a timed format for the main events, but I wanted to use this race to illustrate how much a difference that change can make when lap times are short like they were this weekend. 

Under the old 15- and 20-lap format, the 250SX main even would have been just 10 minutes and 49 seconds while the 450SX main event would have been 15 minutes 15 seconds. With the new timed format, we got to see about five minutes more racing in each class. That's almost an entire heat race!