J-Mart

In the 250 class, Jeremy Martin came through with the ride of the day. After going down on the first lap, Martin was sitting in last place even after the second lap. Once he got going, he picked off riders quickly and was in 11th by the halfway point of the race, and then fourth place when the checkered flag flew. 

Many were looking forward to seeing how Martin would be able to challenge Osborne in the main event because Martin qualified 1.286 seconds faster than everyone else earlier in the day. 

I charted out the distance between Osborne and Martin for each lap of the race to see if Martin was gaining or losing time on him while battling through the pack. Surprisingly, if you take out the 30-some seconds Martin lost in his first-lap crash, he only lost .158 seconds to Osborne. Take a look at how Martin was able to close the gap and then lost time once he came up to a group of riders, and then gained back that time once he cleared them. Impressive stuff. 

Low Entries

On the Fly Racing Racer X Podcast earlier this week, Steve Matthes made mention of how few rider entries there were for Foxborough, with just 35 riders entering for each class. I decided to take a look at how the rider entries have faired for each round this season. We started out with 52 riders in each class at Anaheim 1, peaked in the 450 class with 59 at Daytona, and peaked in the 250 class with 53 in Oakland and Tampa. 

There isn't a significant drop-off until Seattle, Minneapolis, and then obviously this weekend. The drop off in rider turnout isn't surprising when you consider how many injuries we've had, the bad weather at the last few rounds (snow in Indy, rain in Seattle, snow in Minneapolis), and privateer budgets are simply stretched thin at this point in the season. We'll see if these number rise back up in the mid-to high 40s  in Salt Lake City, or if the extra riders are just going to save their energy for the outdoors.