Posts
1641
Joined
4/1/2014
Location
PA
US
Is going to be up in the air. Nobody on the line (aside from Reed) has a 450 SX title. I'm the biggest Reed fan, but he's not winning the title.
Tomac - he has the fire and tastes the title last year. He should be as motivated as ever since Mr consistency is gone. He just needs more consistency himself.
Marvin - I love what I see from him. I say he has the best shot at the title.
Roczen - it is literally anyone's guess where he will be at A1. But he seems to be recovering fast.
Baggett - not so much an indoor rider, but we will see what happens.
Wild cards - Anderson, seely, Webb, Wilson, davalos, and barcia. Any one of these guys can win a race or 2 next year I think.
Tomac - he has the fire and tastes the title last year. He should be as motivated as ever since Mr consistency is gone. He just needs more consistency himself.
Marvin - I love what I see from him. I say he has the best shot at the title.
Roczen - it is literally anyone's guess where he will be at A1. But he seems to be recovering fast.
Baggett - not so much an indoor rider, but we will see what happens.
Wild cards - Anderson, seely, Webb, Wilson, davalos, and barcia. Any one of these guys can win a race or 2 next year I think.
T
E
W
The Shop
Free shipping: VITALMX
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
KR94 would need at least few races if not a season to find the groove and that should take him out of title contention. I.E. He now knows that there're stuff to fix other than his arm: Out of his last 5 SX races he fell down the same way (landing - '16Rd17LV; MEC; '17Rd3A2) and that cost him in every sense god knows how much. If his come-back translates in a rider as strong or stronger than ever that locks confidence with being smart brace yourself.
ET3 '17 should be more than enough to win the '18 title dominantly but just to make sure he needs to work a little bit on the mental side (loose it a lot, smartness, ego, speed, vanishing). He basically needs to borrow either Ryans' mentality plus an electric start just in case. I.E. See how the real himself showed up after he won the MX title (huge relieve Eli - great job man!!) compared to the shy and nervous guy that you can see sometimes. Maybe FELD/Monster and not too much of Johnny T will help him. His dad relationship is the main cause of his success but is also a double-sword thing that had/has some side-effects that were hard to mitigate and rarely affect but when does just fuck him up. This title, getting older and new mental off-season prep would help.
MM25 needs more confidence and that can be a matter of few races and changing his French mentality towards a more straight American mentality, he would be able to do that depending on his results. Consistency is his bigger issue though as it costs him a lot of points in the '17SX the MX title. We still need to discover how would he respond to the being KTM I repeat KTM number one guy for SX.
CW2 and JA21 would bring some emotions but not for a championship unless they've some help and huge improvement.
Then you have podiums/heat winner guys like BB4, CS14, BT20, JB19, DM18, JG33, JS7 (if in shape) and CR22 that could be very lucky to get a win.
Of course, the biggest factors are improvements in the off-season, starts, setup, crashes, injuries, mechanical and DNF which are unpredictable. The 3 big dog histories demonstrate it. At the end, they're all young adults under drama, pressure and passion playing sponsors/business/show big money and they're all champions and deserve mad respect for what they're doing.
Sorry for the long post, I was thinking out loud.
T
E
W
Tomac is an easy pick - he'll either win it or be super close.
Roczen would take me completely by surprise if he was in the hunt for any title in 2018.
I would like to say Roczen but I'm not sure we see him at A1. I think he knows it and the last few interviews of him have echoed that.
Pit Row
and I'll add you have too haha
Roczen will be a surprise to me if he even finishes top 5 in any race next year but I do like surprises!
Post a reply to: The 2018 SX Title