| May 6, 2016
With the 2016 Monster Energy/AMA Supercross Series almost in the books, today marked Press Day for the series finale at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada. Opening up the conference were the three Monster Energy/Babbitt’s Kawasaki racers from the Amsoil Arenacross Series who are first, second and third in the points standings heading into the finale tonight at Las Vegas’s Orleans Arena.
Points leader Gavin Faith (189 points) leads his teammates Chris Blose (181) and Jacob Hayes (163) into tonight’s race, and there are two AX Main Events on the docket, which means if Faith finishes no worse than fourth place in both main events, he will clinch the championship. The odds of Hayes pulling off the title are a bit longer, as they would require Hayes winning both main events while Blose finishes no better than ninth and 10th in the two races and Faith finishes no better than 15th and 14th in the two main events.
The odds are in Faith’s favor, but almost anything can happen in Arenacross. The only sure thing this year is that the Babbitt’s team will definitely regain the AX title.
In supercross, the 450SX class is decided as of last week, with the top three in points all safely in their respective positions, but the one interesting thing from the press conference was the Fox riding gear that the champ, Red Bull KTM’s Ryan Dungey, and RCH Suzuki’s Ken Roczen were sporting. The gear was done up in the colors and theme of Captain America (Dungey) and Iron Man (Roczen) for the Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War, which officially opened in theaters today.
One moment that got the room giggling a bit was when Dungey wondered out loud why Roczen got to be Iron Man before quickly realizing that Roczen was German, and thus wouldn’t be the best choice for Captain America.
As for the 250cc Eastern Regional and Western Regional SX Championship chases, tomorrow night’s Las Vegas SX finale features a brand-new and potentially very exciting format. While the Dave Coombs Sr. East/West Shootout has been a staple of the AMA Supercross Series for most of 30 years, this is the first year where the season-ending face-off between the two coasts will pay points. The format will look like this:
There will be one Heat race for each coast, the top nine of which from each will qualify for the East/West Shootout main event. Then, the LCQ will feature a mixture of both coasts to determine the final four main-event competitors. And then, for the first time in the history of the race, the top 22 racers from both coasts will line up and the points they earn will be applied to their respective championship chases.
This adds a whole new wrinkle to the event, as both series points leaders–GEICO Honda’s Malcolm Stewart (250cc East) and Yamalube/Star Racing Yamaha’s Cooper Webb (250cc West)–hold sizeable leads in their respective championships, but with adding in all of the top racers from the opposite coast, it creates much more of a potential opportunity for second or third in points to upset the points leader at the finale.
For example, if current second-place racer on the East, Aaron Plessinger, were to get out front and run away with the East/West Shootout and points leader Stewart were to fall in the first turn and only manage to catch up to ninth place in the stacked field of racers, Plessinger would take that title. The odds of Stewart finishing as low as ninth against just 250cc East guys is nearly zero, but adding in Cooper Webb, Joey Savatgy, and the rest of the West takes the odds from nearly zero to quite a bit higher than that.
It should make for an interesting night.
One last note, though, there’s been a rumor circulating that Webb may have injured his wrist a couple of weeks ago, but he denied it in the press conference. But when the riders got to take a few laps around the track for the press, he was wearing a wrist brace.
The first hour (from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. PST, or 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST) of supercross racing will be on Fox Sports 2 live from Sam Boyd tomorrow night, while the rest of the event will be aired on Fox Sports 1 starting at 8 p.m. PST (11 p.m. EST).
–Steve Cox