Supercross Margin of Victory Analysis: Premier Class

Supercross Racing is Closer Than Ever

Since most years in this data pool do not include Triple Crown races and the fact that they are shorter than a typical main event, they have been omitted from the average calculations.

From 2003-2010, the average margin of victory per season never went lower than 5.9 seconds. Since then, it has happened in eleven of the sixteen seasons. I have 24 years of data, in the first half of that from 2003-2014, the average margin of victory was 6.952 seconds. In the second half of the data, 2015-present, that average margin of victory drops over a second and a half to 5.353 seconds.

Big Margins of Victory are a Thing of the Past

Since the start of the new decade in 2020, there have only been eight main events with a margin of victory of more than 10 seconds. That is a steep drop from the 24 such main events in the 2010s decade. From just 2017-2019, there were ten of those main events.

Small Winning Margins

Seven of the top ten smallest margins of victory recorded since 2003 have come since 2018. Cooper Webb can be thanked for that as he has proved to be a late race assassin, earning five spots in the top ten, including the smallest at 0.028 seconds over Ken Roczen in Arlington.

Large Winning Margins

On the other end of the spectrum, seven of the top ten largest margins of victory have come prior to 2018. Kevin Windham shows up in that top ten three times including his record margin of 1:06.941 at Anaheim 1 in 2005. Mud races certainly played their part in these numbers as a good chunk of these record large margins have come in the elements.

Which Riders Have the Largest Margins of Victory on Average?

That leads me to showing off the individual riders with the largest average margins of victory. You’ll notice that three of the top four are among the “old guard” in this data set: Kevin Windham, Ricky Carmichael, and Chad Reed. Ryan Villopoto and Marvin Musquin are in that tweener range of the data and both have not been apart of the tail end of this shift towards closer racing. Chase Sexton is fifth on the list and is the first among current riders. When Sexton wins, on average, he does so comfortably.