Tonight the 2020 Monster Energy AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship drops the gate in Arlington for round eight of the season.
For the first time this year, and only the fourth time in his career, Eli Tomac heads into a Supercross race with the red plate, having overtaken Ken Roczen in the points last weekend in Tampa.
Tomac’s Tampa performance was quite impressive, with much more speed than anyone else, and looking pretty safe whilst he was at it. Additionally, Tomac’s starts in Tampa were good, which had previously been his major problem in 2020. If that continues into this weekend, the rest of the pack may need to worried.
However, this season has been consistently inconsistent. It feels like every time we arrive to a new race, we’re expecting something to happen, a particular rider or number of riders to be up front, and almost every week the prediction does not represent the reality.
For example, this weekend in Arlington will be the second Triple Crown event of the season, after Glendale earlier this year. The previous Triple Crown saw Roczen dominate, winning all three Main Events and taking the overall quite comfortably as a result. It therefore would be reasonable to expect that Roczen will be competitive, and maybe even have an advantage over his competitors, tonight in Arlington.
However, Roczen’s starts in the past few weeks have fallen off a little, whereas Adam Cianciarulo’s have picked up. In these shorter Main Events, Cianciarulo’s late-race struggles might be less apparent, and his starts will be more advantageous since his rivals will have less time to recover time if he gets out front early as he did in San Diego and Tampa.
However, the whoops section in Texas tonight is pretty long, and the whoops have been Cianciarulo’s downfall in the past two weeks, as well as in the last Triple Crown in Glendale.
In comparison, Cooper Webb’s performance in the whoops has improved quite dramatically since Oakland, and his goal will presumably continue to be the fastest rider in the whoops tonight. Additionally, Webb is the fastest rider at jumping the whoops, and should they become jumpers tonight, Webb could be in prime position. Triple Crowns mean more laps, which means there is more scope for the track to get more beaten up, and those whoops could get chewed up pretty bad over the course of night with that in mind. Webb could be in the pound seat, at least for the last Main Event. Expect the reigning champion to get better as the night goes on.
His ride went pretty under the radar in Tampa last week, as he went from around thirteenth to fourth, but Justin Barcia was fast last Saturday. If he figures a couple starts out in Texas tonight he could be in the mix for a decent overall finish and perhaps close down his deficit to the points leader, which currently stands at twenty points.
This will be the first Triple Crown event for the 250SX East riders this weekend, as they enter their second round of the season. Shane McElrath dominated the opening race last weekend in Tampa, winning by a couple of seconds over Chase Sexton, the reigning East Coast champion. The parity between the riders in 250SX East category at the top is quite high, so it is difficult to predict an outcome of this weekend’s race – the individual Mains and the overall – but for sure there should be five or six riders in the mix, with McElrath, Sexton and the third podium finisher from Tampa, Jeremy Martin, expecting to fight at the front, along with Garrett Marchbanks, Jordon Smith and RJ Hampshire, who were fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, last weekend.
Super Crossed Up 