2016 Arlington Supercross Qualifying Report

Photos by: Hoppenworld

The 2016 Monster Energy AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship, has wrapped up the early Californian West Coast rounds and now heads to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas for round seven. While 2016 will mark the 36th time the gate has dropped for an AMA Supercross in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, this will only be the eighth time the Monster Energy Supercross event has been held inside the beautiful, $1.3 billion home of the Dallas Cowboys. Monster Energy/Yamaha’s Chad Reed has been the winningest Supercross rider at the Dallas/Fort Worth area event with four wins, but none of those have come in the new stadium.

After six rounds have been completed in the Monster Energy Supercross series, we generally have a firm grasp on who the 450SX Championship favorite is, and in 2016 Red Bull/KTM’s Ryan Dungey has separated himself from the pack with four wins and two second place finishes. In the 250SX class, it looked early on like Star Racing/Yamaha’s Cooper Webb would be even more dominant than Dungey has been, but after a mechanical issue in Oakland and a few big mistakes, his eighteen-point lead melted away into a three-point deficit to Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki’s Joey Savatgy. If Webb wants this Western Regional 250SX Championship, he needs to stop the bleeding today.

In the opening 450SX session of the day—surprise, surprise—a Red Bull/KTM rider was on top of the leaderboard. Okay, so the part about it being a Red Bull/KTM rider was not a surprise, but it wasn’t Dungey. Instead it was Marvin Musquin on top with the fastest lap (50.596) in a session for the first time in his 450SX career. The Frenchman has been steadily picking up momentum, and with Dallas formerly part of the Eastern Regional 250SX Championship he won last year, the #25 is obviously comfortable here.

Also under 51 seconds in the opening 450SX sessions were RCH/Soaring Eagle/Suzuki’s Ken Roczen (50.790) and Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Eli Tomac (50.994). Musquin, Roczen and Tomac were all only able to dip under the 51-second mark on one lap, but Tomac had the best second fastest lap (51.027) of the group.

Where was Ryan Dungey in the opening session? The #1 was just over the 51-second (51.023) mark in fourth. While the #1 has been on fire in qualifying of late, being the fourth fastest 450 in the opening session will not cause any worry in the KTM pits.

If there was any worry about Dungey being fourth fastest in session one, that worry instantaneously vanished when he finished the final session with the overall fastest lap time (50.385). In session one, Ryan could not get under the 51-second mark, but in session two, he looked more comfortable and ended up dipping under 51 seconds twice and pushing his teammate, Musquin (50.401), back to second overall in qualifying. Whatever Roger Decoster and the boys are doing over at KTM, they’re forcing the rest of the pits to play catch up today.

Finishing behind the Red Bull/KTM boys on the final session leaderboard was Rockstar/Husqvarna’s Christophe Pourcel (50.484) in third, HRC/Honda’s Trey Canard (50.618) in fourth and Roczen (50.790) in fifth. This marks the seventh straight weekend that CP377 has qualified inside the top five, but will he finally decide to try and turn that speed into a top ten in the main event is the question. Earlier in the year, we asked Christophe about the discrepancy between his qualifying finishes and his main event results, and he assured us that around round seven or eight he would turn it on. Well, it’s round seven, and you can be sure his fans and his team are hoping it comes tonight.

Looking at the top ten of the 450SX qualifying results, the MotoConcepts boys—Vince Friese and Mike Alessi—are the biggest surprise. Vince was actually on the trackside top five leaderboard at one point in both sessions this morning and finished qualifying in ninth overall with Alessi right behind him in tenth. Since Friese’s fight with Weston Peick, the MotoConcepts squad has been rather quiet, but we have to give credit where credit’s due.

In the first 250SX sessions of the day, Webb and Savatgy went right to work on establishing their alpha status in the class. The two went back and forth throughout the session laying down fast laps, but in the end, it was the #37 with the fastest lap (52.011) of the session and Webb over a full three tenths of a second in back (52.345) of the Kawasaki rider. With two wins on his resume in 2016, Savatgy is beginning to believe, and it is now up to Webb to squash that belief before the break for the Eastern Regional 250SX Championship begins next weekend.

The other three 250SX riders in the 52-second range in the opening session were GEICO/Honda’s Christian Craig (52.598), Rockstar/Husqvarna’s Zach Osborne (52.577) and Troy Lee Designs/KTM’s Mitchell Oldenburg (52.975). All three have been regulars inside the top five in qualifying in 2016 and were on the trackside leaderboard at the end of the opening session. Another regular inside the top five is Cycletrader/Yamaha’s Colt Nichols, and the #69 was just a tick off (53.135) in sixth.

In the final 250SX session, the track was worked in, and the much faster times in the 250SX session reflected that. In the beginning of the session, Craig got right into the mix with the overall fastest lap (51.132), but by the end of the session, Savatgy (50.631) and Webb (50.733) had pushed the #38 back to finish qualifying third overall.

Just like in session one, the #37 and the #1 were firing off heaters and raising the bar each time they threw up a new fastest lap. Joey had a 50.872 early on, but they both upped their fastest laps on the final lap of qualifying. If you ask each of them individually you will probably hear them both say it’s just practice, but deep down their both using “just practice” to gain some mental momentum before the lights go out in the stadium.

For the first time that we can remember, the top six fastest riders in session two were the exact same as they were in session one. Osborne (52.002), Oldenburg (52.101) and Nichols (52.187) were fourth, fifth and sixth in both sessions and are probably not feeling all that good about the gap between themselves and the top two. Osborne and Nichols have both scored a podium in 2016, but Oldenburg will be hoping to convert his top five speed into the first podium of his career tonight.