You can say that it’s a 17-race championship, but we know that by Daytona or so you start to get an idea of what’s going to happen,” said Jeff Emig, the 1997 AMA Supercross Champion who spent a decade as a television analyst for Fox Sports. “So you’ve got about six or seven, eight weeks, let’s say, to win the thing. That window is so small. And most of the time it’s about not making any big mistakes.”

It’s pressure enough when a rider’s entire week of practice motos and training sessions gets summed up in one 20-minute race on Saturday night—of which 90 percent hinges on the first three seconds out of the starting gate. It’s even harder knowing that an entire year of work could boil down to eight of these races, and that one year can define an entire career if you get over the hump (like Jason Anderson or Cooper Webb have in recent years) or if you don’t (like Eli Tomac or Ken Roczen).