Wednesday, May 6, 2020

2020 Supercross Season Catch-Up

This past Saturday was supposed to be the conclusion of the 2020 Supercross season in Salt Lake City, Utah. Like everything else around the world, the cover-19 pandemic stopped Supercross in the middle of its season and it has not contested a round since the middle of March.

Without a season completed, a review is not possible but I thought this would be a great chance to remind ourselves where we were in the Supercross campaign. Supercross has been forgotten over the last two months with every series in hiatus. NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula One, MotoGP and so on have taken the spotlight.

Today, we give Supercross its moment, answering seven questions on this prolonged 2020 season.

Where were we?
The last race was Daytona on March 7, the tenth of 17 scheduled rounds in the 2020 championship.

Eli Tomac took the victory after a spirited battle with Ken Roczen and the victory gave Tomac a three-point championship lead over Roczen. It was Tomac's fifth victory of the season and he had finished in the top five of nine consecutive races.

Roczen has three victories and prior to Daytona he has been in the top two of the championship since the second round of the season at St. Louis. He has eight podium finishes and has not finished worse than sixth this season.

Entering Daytona, Tomac and Roczen were tied on 200 points with Tomac holding the tiebreaker.

What has been lost?
Seven races have been effectively cancelled, starting with Indianapolis on March 14. Detroit, Seattle, Denver, Foxborough, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City are the six other cancelled rounds.

Las Vegas was scheduled to be the third and final Triple Crown round in the championship. Glendale and Arlington were the first two Triple Crown rounds of the season. Roczen and Tomac split those rounds respectively.

What is the plan?
Like every other sporting entity, Supercross is looking for an alternate to return to competition at some point in 2020.

The most recent plan is a potential return to racing on May 31 and the seven remaining rounds all taking place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. That plan is not set in stone and the door is open for races occurring at other venues in different states. If Glendale was the only venue multiple track configurations would be considered.

This scheduled resumption would force the 2020 AMA Motocross Championship season to be delayed further into summer with July 4 as a potential start date.

One of the first plans for Supercross was to resume the season in September following the conclusion of the Motocross season.

Who was doing as expected?
Let's move away from scheduling for a moment and look at the results from the first ten races of 2020.

It is no surprise Tomac has five victories and leads the championship. Roczen is doing pretty good. It is not a surprise Roczen has multiple victories and it is a refreshing change after his difficulties with injuries over the last few seasons.

Cooper Webb is third in the championship, 29 points behind Tomac. The 2019 champion's lone victory was at San Diego and Webb has seven podium finishes but he has finished 12th twice.

Jason Anderson returned after missing most of the 2019 season due to injury and Anderson finds himself fifth in the championship. He has three podium finishes, all third-place finishes and two of those were at the Triple Crown rounds.

Who was doing better than expected?
Justin Barcia is fourth in the championship, 31 points off Tomac with Barcia's victory at the season opener at Anaheim being the backbone of his season. He has two runner-up finishes, at St. Louis and Atlanta and behind Roczen on both occasions. He has eight top five finishes in ten races.

Malcolm Stewart entered 2020 having never had a top five finish in 33 Supercross starts. Stewart still does not have that elusive top five finish but he has finished in the top ten of every race this season and he is sixth in the championship on 152 points.

Stewart's Smartop/Bullfrog Spas/Motoconcepts Honda teammate Justin Hill is seventh in the championship, 11 points behind Stewart in the championship. In 2019, Hill's best finish was seventh and in 2020 he has finishes of fifth, sixth and sixth.

Who isn't minding this break?
Adam Cianciarulo and Zach Osborne both had their seasons truncated due to injuries with the two riders missing the last three and two rounds respectively.

Cianciarulo had two runner-up finishes in the first seven races and was fifth in the championship. Osborne was ninth in the championship when his injury occurred. Osborne had picked up his third top five finish of the season at his final start at Arlington but he had finished outside the top ten in seven races this season.

Cianciarulo had been planning a return to competition at the Seattle round scheduled for March 28. Osborne is back to training.

This has also been a tough season for Aaron Plessinger and Blake Baggett. Plessinger has not picked up a top five finish this season and he is 11th in the championship on 125 points. Baggett is 16 points behind Plessinger and while Baggett was third at San Diego, he has finished outside the top 15 in three of the last four races.

What else is there to say?
I think back to Daytona and wonder how bittersweet that race was. Not because it is the last time we have had a Supercross event but because if it had been the scheduled season finale it would have been a brilliant conclusion to a fantastic season.

The Tomac-Roczen battle was terrific. The race started with Roczen taking a commanding lead and Tomac mired in the back half of the top ten. Tomac worked his way forward and caught Roczen but the German did not yield. Both riders were on edge but Tomac slipped on through and took the victory.

When this hiatus began all I could think about how beautiful that race was but how unfortunate it would be if that was the end of the season because we did not get a chance to appreciate it. The top two riders entered Daytona tied, virtually in a winner-take-all situation and in the race they were the top two riders and the battle met expectations.

I felt bad for Roczen because it was a case of losing the battle but looking ahead for possibly winning the war. No one knew with the flip of a switch seven rounds would disappear from the calendar and Roczen's championship hopes would vanish right when it seemed he was very much alive.

That is not Tomac's fault and the Kawasaki rider has been magnificent this season. He has won half the races but he has put on some stirring rides to put himself first in the championship. Daytona was just one of them but at Atlanta, Tomac went from 15th to fourth and had a handful of run-ins along the way. Tomac and Roczen traded the lead at Oakland with Tomac coming out on top late.

If Tomac was crowned champion it would be deserved but Roczen losing seven races to possibly take the title for himself is a cruel loss, especially after a five-year setback to his career.

Every sporting league is hoping to get restarted and soon. Baseball is back in South Korea. The Bundesliga in Germany plans to be back later this month. NASCAR appears set to take the first plunge in North America. Those are encouraging signs but with every bit of encouragement we are reminded of the unknown with the virus, from the contagion level and lack of testing to possible immunity and mutations of the virus. All it takes is one case to unravel two months of work.

Supercross seems prepared for a restart but it may not get it day. If it does return, we could see a championship fight for the ages. If it doesn't, the 2020 season will go down as perhaps the greatest of all the lost seasons of the pandemic.