When the field closes in on Eli Tomac, he responds with wins and after sweeping the Oakland round with a heat and main win, he remains atop the NBC SuperMotocross Power Rankings for the fifth week.
Tomac has not ridden mistake free in the first six rounds, but after disappointing races at Anaheim 2 and Tampa, he responded immediately with victories the following week. Coupled with wins in the first two races of the season, he is the only 450 rider with multiple feature victories, but he has not been able to shake his two main rivals because they regularly finish in the top three.
Tomac has a slim seven-point advantage over both Chase Sexton and Cooper Webb, who are tied for second.
Webb and Sexton are keeping the pressure on Tomac in regard to the championship, but Jason Anderson is the rider second in the NBC SuperMotocross Power Rankings after Oakland. In the first six rounds, he has not finished worse than seventh in any main event or outside the top five in his heats. That consistency shows he has a ton of speed, but he needs to ride incident free in the next few rounds and find victory lane if he wants to turn the 2023 Championship into a four-man race.
MORE: Eli Tomac ties Ricky Carmichael for third on wins’ list
Webb’s win two weeks ago in Tampa closed the gap on Tomac. He wasn’t able to back it up with another victory, but with a sweep of the top five and four podium finishes, he has Tomac looking over his shoulder. Webb is at his best when he is applying pressure.
Sexton also has a perfect record of top-fives this season and one more podium finish than Tomac or Webb. His Achilles Heel has been late-race accidents in the last two rounds. If he gets rid of those and starts to challenge Tomac for wins, the championship battle is going to get extremely interesting.
Ken Roczen finally had a truly bad race. In the first five weeks, an eighth in the Houston main was the only time this season he failed to crack the top five in either a heat or feature. That evaporated in Oakland when he finished 11th in the 19-lap feature, but it was tempered by his first heat win of the year.
Supercross hits the 45-day mark this week, so the opening race will soon age out of the formula and we will begin seeing who has the most recent momentum.
450 Rankings
| This Week |
Rider | Power Avg. |
Last Week |
Diff. |
| 1. | Eli Tomac [4 Main Wins; 4 Heat Wins] |
84.67 | 1 | 0 |
| 2. | Jason Anderson [3 Heat Wins] |
84.58 | 2 | 0 |
| 3. | Cooper Webb [1 Main Win] |
82.42 | 4 | 1 |
| 4. | Chase Sexton [1 Main; 4 Heat Wins] |
82.33 | 3 | -1 |
| 5. | Ken Roczen [1 Heat Win] |
79.33 | 5 | 0 |
| 6. | Aaron Plessinger | 75.83 | 6 | 0 |
| 7. | Justin Barcia | 73.42 | 8 | 1 |
| 8. | Dylan Ferrandis | 68.00 | 7 | -1 |
| 9. | Justin Cooper | 66.50 | 9 | 0 |
| 10. | Adam Cianciarulo | 65.00 | 10 | 0 |
| 11. | Christian Craig | 62.75 | 13 | 2 |
| 12. | Joey Savatgy | 61.58 | 12 | 0 |
| 13. | Colt Nichols | 56.25 | 15 | 2 |
| 14. | Dean Wilson | 50.50 | 16 | 2 |
| 15. | Justin Hill | 42.73 | 18 | 3 |
| 16. | Josh Hill | 41.33 | 25 | 9 |
| 17. | Shane McElrath | 38.58 | 19 | 2 |
| 18. | Benny Bloss | 34.80 | 28 | 10 |
| 19. | Fredrik Noren | 33.60 | 20 | 1 |
| 20. | Kyle Chisholm | 31.82 | 29 | 9 |
Here’s your updated points standings after round 2️⃣ of @MonsterEnergy Supercross 📋#SupercrossLIVE #SuperMotocross pic.twitter.com/zArFUXXVXx
— Supercross LIVE! (@SupercrossLIVE) February 19, 2023
The 250 West riders were back in action with the rescheduled Oakland round and the SuperMotocross Power Rankings continue to focus on Hunter and Jett Lawrence, who top their respective points’ battles. This is the first time in Supercross history that brothers have led the West and the East.
Hunter continues to have enough Power Ranking points to top the list, but with a few more races in the books, Jett has had more time to stumble. He’s done so just once when an accident in the first race of the Anaheim Triple Crown landed him sixth on the chart. Otherwise, he’s had a perfect record of podium finishes in his heats and mains.
Jett added maximum points last week after winning both his heat and the main.
Cameron McAdoo is the second-ranked rider in the 250 West division, but consistency for several drivers at the front of the East riders pushes him down to seventh overall. An injured arm at Anaheim 2 caused him to struggle in two of the features that week and his sixth-place finish in the overall hurt his numbers. He gets an iron man reward for the gutsy performance in Anaheim and his rebound to finish second in his heat at Oakland and third in the main.
It was consistency and a 4-2-2 in the Anaheim 2 Triple Crown that gave Kitchen his first Supercross win. He showed that same trait in Oakland with a fourth in both his heat and the main. Trouble in the San Diego feature has him 11th overall, but he’s swept the top five since.
Mitchell Oldenburg dropped six positions overall to land 13th, but with other 250 West riders also experiencing trouble, he is fourth in that division. A sixth-place finish in his heat snapped a three-race streak of top-fives. His feature was even worse with an eighth-place finish, which is his worst result of the season.
With top-fives in his heat and main, Pierce Brown moved up the list from 19th overall to 14th. After a slow start when he crashed out of his heat in the Anaheim 1 opener, he has finished eighth or better in all but one race. A 13th-place finish in the first Triple Crown feature in the second race on that track keeps him from being higher for now.
250 Rankings
| This Week |
Rider | Power Avg. |
Last Week |
Diff. |
| 1. | Hunter Lawrence – E [2 Main Wins; 2 Heat Wins] |
91.75 | 1 | 0 |
| 2. | Jett Lawrence – W [3 Main; 3 Heat Wins] |
89.63 | 2 | 0 |
| 3. | Max Anstie – E | 86.00 | 2 | -1 |
| 4. | Haiden Deegan – E 1 Heat Win] |
84.75 | 4 | 0 |
| 5. | Jeremy Martin – E | 79.25 | 5 | 0 |
| 6. | Tom Vialle – E | 78.00 | 6 | 0 |
| 7. | Cameron McAdoo – W [1 Heat Win] |
77.13 | 7 | 0 |
| 8. | Nate Thrasher – E [1 Heat Win] |
76.75 | 7 | -1 |
| 9. | Chance Hymas – E | 75.75 | 12 | 3 |
| 9. | Jordon Smith – E [1 Heat Win] |
75.75 | 11 | 2 |
| 11. | Levi Kitchen – W [1 Main Win] |
75.38 | 14 | 3 |
| 12. | Michael Mosiman – E | 74.75 | 13 | 1 |
| 13. | Mitchell Oldenburg – W | 74.25 | 7 | -6 |
| 14. | Pierce Brown – W | 73.38 | 19 | 5 |
| 15. | Stilez Robertson – W [1 Heat Win] |
70.14 | 7 | -8 |
| 16. | RJ Hampshire – W [4 Heat Wins] |
70.00 | 15 | -1 |
| 17. | Max Vohland – W | 68.71 | 16 | -1 |
| 18. | Enzo Lopes – W | 62.13 | 18 | 0 |
| 19. | Derek Kelley – W | 57.50 | 17 | -2 |
| 19. | Chris Blose – E | 57.50 | 21 | 2 |
| 19. | Robbie Wageman – W | 57.50 | 27 | 8 |
* The NBC Power Rankings assign 100 points to a Main event winner and 90 points for each Heat and Triple Crown win, (Triple Crown wins are included with heat wins below the rider’s name). The points decrement by a percentage equal to the number of riders in the field until the last place rider in each event receives five points. The Power Ranking is the average of these percentage points over the past 45 days.
POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 5 AT TAMPA: Chase Sexton, Cooper Webb close in
POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 4 AT HOUSTON: Eli Tomac rebounds from A2 crash, retakes lead
POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 3 AT ANAHEIM 2: Consistency makes Ken Roczen king
POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 2 AT SAN DIEGO: Roczen moves up, Sexton falls
POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 1 AT ANAHEIM 1: Tomac, Jett Lawrence gain an early advantage
