There wasn't a whole lot to be excited about heading into the 15th round of Monster Energy Supercross. Jason Anderson had a very comfortable lead in the 450SX championship and Zach Osborne's main competition in the 250SX championship, Austin Forkner, went down last weekend in Minneapolis. It seemed the air had  pretty much been sucked out of the series.

But luckily for us, Eli Tomac and Marvin Musquin came through with some last-lap action that got the comments section fired up, and Jordon Smith put up a good fight against Osborne in the 250 class. 

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	2nd	54.171	22	55.283	Eli Tomac
2	1st	54.318	15	55.643	Marvin Musquin
3	3rd	54.511	5	57.005	Jason Anderson
4	4th	55.454	8	57.206	Blake Baggett
5	6th	55.773	5	57.785	Weston Peick
6	12th	55.886	3	59.113	Vince Friese
7	5th	56.044	4	57.442	Dean Wilson
8	9th	56.123	7	58.115	Justin Barcia
9	7th	56.184	4	57.974	Malcolm Stewart
10	9th	56.269	4	58.080	Justin Brayton
11	13th	56.429	2	58.779	Tyler Bowers
12	11th	56.597	5	58.000	Christian Craig
13	10th	57.046	21	58.046	Chad Reed
14	22nd	57.077	9	58.113	Kyle Cunningham
15	14th	57.985	5	59.715	Benny Bloss
16	15th	58.269	9	1:00.662	Cedric Soubeyras
17	16th	58.571	8	1:01.737	Henry Miller
18	17th	59.171	7	1:02.606	Brandon Scharer
19	18th	59.461	7	1:03.299	Alex Ray
20	19th	1:00.583	2	1:06.684	Deven Raper
21	20th	1:01.113	2	1:06.655	AJ Catanzaro
22	21st	1:03.417	2	1:09.897	Dustin Pipes

250SX Class — Main Event — Lap Times

Lap Rank	Finish	Best Lap	On Lap	Avg Lap Time	Rider
1	4th	55.183	16	56.802	Jeremy Martin
2	1st	55.604	14	56.792	Zach Osborne
3	2nd	55.652	7	56.840	Jordon Smith
4	3rd	57.152	9	58.534	Kyle Peters
5	5th	57.412	9	59.157	Sean Cantrell
6	6th	57.665	5	59.183	Josh Osby
7	7th	58.103	4	59.267	Brandon Hartranft
8	8th	58.127	9	59.231	Anthony Rodriguez
9	11th	58.217	8	1:01.755	Jacob Williamson
10	9th	58.238	4	59.566	Luke Renzland
11	10th	58.483	5	1:00.304	Thomas Ramette
12	12th	58.692	7	1:01.555	Lorenzo Locurcio
13	21st	59.323	2	59.376	Michael Mosiman
14	13th	59.487	4	1:01.932	John Short
15	19th	59.906	2	1:02.878	Keith Tucker
16	14th	1:00.228	7	1:01.607	Nick Gaines
17	22nd	1:00.382	2	1:01.375	Ramyller Alves
18	20th	1:00.628	3	1:01.666	Tanner Basso
19	17th	1:01.265	9	1:04.642	Vann Martin
20	15th	1:01.268	8	1:03.816	Josh Cartwright
21	18th	1:01.643	3	1:04.865	Cody Vanbuskirk
22	16th	1:01.775	4	1:04.375	Wilson Fleming

Musquin versus Tomac

We've talked about the Musquin versus Tomac last lap incident a few times here on the site, so I'm not going to waste too much time on it. Click here, here, or here if you want to read some way more qualified analysis of the event.

What gets washed away with the take out is how close these two were for the entire race. Other than the laps where they had to roll a triple and fight through some lapped riders that were fighting for their own positions, their lap times were pretty close for how gnarly the track was. Strangely, this time it was Musquin who had a harder time logging super consistent lap times, and Tomac's line is a lot more progressive at the beginning of the race. The main difference between the two obviously came on the last lap, where Tomac put in a 1:27.076 while Musquin was a 1:00.826. Take a look at their times for each lap of the main event. 

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.