Seriously!? How good was the weekend’s AMA Supercross series finale at Las Vegas? And not just the fact this was the first time since 2011 that the 450SX class was actually decided at the final round. From gate drop to chequers, both Main Events provided the most engrossing motorcycle racing I’ve witnessed in a long, long time. You just can’t script that stuff. Well, of course, Feld Entertainment tried to. And they were already the beneficiaries of a script so good, it guaranteed a massive live audience would tune in watch the 250SX East and premier 450SX titles decided in front of a packed house at Las Vegas’ Sam Boyd Stadium. But even the promotion-savvy folks at Feld couldn’t have conjured up a better set of circumstances to keep audiences riveted to the on-track bedlam in both Main events. Let’s just be thankful that Fox Sports had a switched-on a stats guy to keep track of the on-the-fly series standings as positions changed lap to lap, corner to corner.

SETTING THE SCENE

A couple of rounds back, it was hard to bet against Eli Tomac in the 40SX class. Rattling off nine unanswered wins and carrying more momentum than a runaway streamtrain, Tomac had miraculously closed a 29-point deficit to Ryan Dungey. The two headed into the penultimate round equal on points, where Tomac wore the red plate for the first time all season, thanks to his superior win record. And that right there provided the late-season turning point. In moving from the hunter to the hunted, Tomac’s mindset visibly changed. And as predicted by former champs, Ricky Carmichael and Jeff Emig, at that East Rutherford round, the red plate weighed heavily on Tomac’s shoulders. The Kawi rider was off his game all night, while Dungey – assisted by that clumsy last-lap ‘mistake’ by his teammate, Marvin Musquin – won the race the turned his 3-point deficit into a 9-point advantage heading into the Vegas finale.

THE VEGAS EQUATION

In the 450SX Main at Las Vegas, the math was pretty simple. If Tomac won, Dungey could afford to come fourth and still win the title. If he finished fifth, the two would be equal on points and Tomac would win on a count-back. But the stats made that scenario look unlikely. How so? Well, not only had Dungey’s worst finish all season been a fourth – in fact, he posted three of them – but he’d never finished worse than fourth since the second-to-last race of the 2014 season. Yep, 51 races back! Based on that stat alone, it was difficult to bet against the reigning champ nabbing his ‘threepeat’ and fourth premier-class title. Or another way of looking at the scenario: it became a very good bet that Tomac would have to resort to questionable tactics to nudge his KTM-mounted rival back to fifth.
Then again, Dungey was in unfamiliar territory. In his previous title-winning seasons, he’d been crowned before even getting to Las Vegas. Plus, if all the rumours are true, Dungey came into the weekend knowing it’d be his last throw of the dice in a sport that’s been his life, his reason for being, for as long as he can remember. Fuelled by those emotions, a rider – no matter how professional, metronomically consistent or mentally disciplined – can be moved to do uncharacteristic, even irrational, things. And what implications would that have for his threepeat?

450CC SUPER-ROULETTE

Well, as it transpired in this compelling game of 450cc super-roulette, Tomac did end up throwing a few cheap shots at Dungey; the actions of a desperate man with a title on the line. Dungey meanwhile threw caution to the wind; his riding uncharacteristically beholden to his heart, not head. For Dungey, beating Tomac seemed to become a matter of pride, in spite of the fact that the proximity of Jason Anderson, Blake Baggett, Josh Grant and Chad Reed (on Lap 14, all six riders were within three seconds!), created dangerous complications in the title equation.
After the race, Dungey threw a few barbs at Tomac about his “unbelievably cheap shots”, before usual programming resumed. Once the adrenaline subsided, RD spoke glowingly of ET’s speed and consistency, and of his respect for the Kawi kid. When it was all said and done, Dungey won the title with 13 podiums, but only three wins – the least number of wins for a 450SX Class Champion since 1992, when (in a very similar scenario to Dungey vs Tomac) Jeff Stanton’s three wins were enough to win the title against Damon Bradshaw’s nine wins.

MEANWHILE, ON THE BLACKJACK TABLE

Just like the 450cc super-roulette wheel, the permutations of the 250cc Blackjack table was hard to keep up with. We all knew that the one-point differential between Jordon Smith, Joey Savatgy and Zack Osborne would produce one hell of a Main Event. But who knew that Osborne would go down in the first corner and suddenly not be a factor? Who knew Smith would cartwheel himself out of contention? Who knew that Adam Cianciarulo would check out and, at one stage with all the mayhem going on behind him, sudden represent a title threat himself? And who thought it even remotely possible that Osborne could recover from stone, motherless last, to a last-corner, super-aggressive dive up the inside of Savatgy for seventh, and deprive the Kawasaki rider of the title that was literally 50 metres from his grasp? There’s no doubt that Osborne was the fastest guy in the class all season, and he thoroughly deserved the title. But spare a thought for Savatgy. Sure, he’d crashed out of the lead on an obscene number of occasions this year, but remember this time last year when Savatgy checked out to win the 250SX Main at Las Vegas, only to swallow the bitter pill that Cooper Webb, finishing way back in the pack, pipped him by one meagre point in the title chase. Whether he’s got the Good Lord Above on his side or not (and Osborne sure does), Savatgy has got to be ready to throw in the towel right about now! Come to think of it, so has Jordon Smith.