Muddy Creek is in the books and Eli Tomac continued to dominate the 450 Class, keeping his overall win streak alive at five in a row and extending his points lead over Marvin Musquin.

In the 250 Class, we saw some wild moto scores equal podium finishes. Shane McElrath got his first 250 overall win with 3-2 scores, Dylan Ferrandis went 11-1 for second, and Chase Sexton went 8-4 for third overall. But the real story was Jeremy Martin crashing out of the second moto. He will miss the rest of the season, leaving his brother Alex and Aaron Plessinger to fight for the title.

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. 

450 MOTO 1

450 MOTO 2

250 MOTO 1

250 MOTO 2

Marvin Musquin

Musquin's 2018 outdoor campaign has seemed pretty vanilla so far. He hasn't been bad, but he hasn't been able to match the excellence of Eli Tomac yet. He's won two motos and finished in the top five in every moto this year despite some bad starts, but it still seems like something is missing. 

Wondering if something was actually wrong with Musquin or if my mind was just playing tricks on me, I went back to last year to compare Musquin's first five rounds from 2017 to 2018. The first three rounds of each season were actually pretty similar, finishing in the top four in each moto and grabbing one win in 2017. The next two rounds of 2017 went off the rails as he suffered a knee injury during practice, and by the tenth moto of the season, Musquin reached his lowest point, finishing 34th in the moto and falling 34 points behind Tomac for the championship. 

Compare that to this year, where his worst finish so far has been a fifth in the first moto at Muddy Creek, and he's actually scored 49 more points through five rounds than he did last year (210 versus 161). Musquin's been better this year, but his only problem is that Tomac has also been a lot better. He's currently 32 points behind Tomac in the points, which is two fewer than last year when he was able to get back in contention later in the season. But with the way Tomac is riding this year and the lack of depth in the 450 Class, podiums won't be enough—he'll have to rip off a string of wins.