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Thanks, when records come up I like to go and look into it a bit and even though I watched it, sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around it.
Side note: I was a flagger at Tampa and got a chance to talk to your guy Max in the tunnel before opening ceremonies. What a great guy, shame we won't see him in 250 outdoors this year.
What would a rider have to accomplish to get anywhere near McGrath's record? The rider would have to come into the 450 class balls out and win 10 races every season until they retire...that's the real truth to MC's win record. Average 450 career length for a champion is around 7-8 years. What Tomac is doing at his age is uncharted territory. So even if your body can last 10 years and still be competitive to win, you have to win a minimum of 7 each year to come close.
Records are made to be broken. If it was done once, it can be done again, and better.
Or if he'd gone straight to Yamaha.
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It’s because those three were so far ahead of the competition.
Carmichael lapped 3rd at Daytona in 03, with Reed I believe lapping 6th.
At San Diego in 05, they both lapped 4th and Reed crossed the finish line right behind 3rd place at the finish.
Stewart came back from injury and was right there with them.
That’s unheard of now. They took so many wins from each other.
To further point out how gnarly Stanton was, the only rider to win both SX and MX titles in 3 of 4 years since him has been RC who did it 3 years in a row in 01 through 03. Stanton's problem was MC came along and he was a force of nature who overshadowed what had just happened the previous years.
Yep. The 17-race seasons didn't begin until 2008. The year after Carmichael retired. (Except for the oddball 17-race season in 1998.)
1994-1997 were only 15-race seasons, and was the bulk of McGrath's prime.
All depends on how long current riders race for.
The current 450 class is racing till an older age.
RV has the best win percentage of any rider. If he raced at the same level for another 5 years he would have been close to mc.
I don't rate eli that high on the all timers list coz he has raced a lot more years then those around him on the most wins list.
If a future racer can be highly successful in the 450 class from 20-32. 12 years they need 6 win per season.
Most other sports are going that way with the athletes competing for long. But having more wins doesn't mean they are better. Just lasted longer.
Senna, Schumacher vs Hamilton?
Jordan vs LeBron?
This is a really cool analysis actually.
Jett will be the closest
Who has the most wins per season over their career? I think that is more telling of who the better/more dominate riders are. A lesser rider could simply race longer and possibly win more races than a better rider.
The impressive thing about MC is how he maxed his career and win opportunities, even through a few tough circumstances. RV left a fair few potential wins on the table, as has Tomac, as did Stew.
When Hannah won his 3 SX titles in the 70's, there were only 10 races each year. Need someone with a lot of time on their hands to work out the win percentage. Much fairer in my opinion.
Not really, a guy like MC was just riding his last couple years. Should that count against him. Dungey came back for outdoors, should his lack of podiums count against his podium average? The reality is on a statistical level they do but like I always say: There are 3 types of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Absolutely insane luck to get 1 guy with ability like that over the entire field, let alone 3 of them - let alone 3 of them at the same time. Golden era of the sport was with those names.
If Villopoto and Carmichael had both went SX only at age 26 instead of retiring completely, they’d have theoretically gotten really close if they kept at around 70-80% of their current pace on win totals. I think those are the only two instances since MC that could have really challenged it. I believe McGrath’s last full time MX season was at age 25. He went SX only (aside from the occasional one off outdoor race) from 26 onward. He got his last win in 01 at age 29.
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It always amuses me when podcasters ask why Eli hasn’t been thought of in that group. It’s because the guys in that group All raced each other.
Not sure what your point here is. I was just responding to a guy wondering what someone would need to do. My response was pointing out that 4 years of SX only by Villopoto or Carmichael instead of retiring might have done the job. They’d be going SX only one year age wise after McGrath.
It’s true but that just means you aren’t old enough to remember when there were like 6 Hall of famers on the SX track at one time. Hannah, Glover, Barnett, RJ, Ward, O’Mara, Bailey, who else? Any of them could pull off the win. It wasn’t 3 guys that you knew 1 of them was winning. The field today is much deeper than the RC Stew Reed years.
"who else?"
Marty Smith, Jeff Ward, Chuck Sun....
Edit: just re-read you said hall of famers....don't believe Chuck was one.
I disagree that the field is deeper.
I think the top 3 are not as good So the leaders are closer to the pack
There was more than 6 hall of famers on the track at one time; Factory Honda alone had 4 of them in '84.
McGrath is a super nice guy to boot, very down to Earth. Got to sit with him in the SLC pressbox on his farewell tour (Thanks to TFS, R.I.P.). He was pointing Stewart’s lines out to me like we were old friends. Something I’ll never forget.
There where 10 in 77, 11 in 78 and 12 in 79 and he won 6 races each year. He won 18 of the 33 races. 33 races now days won’t fill two seasons. If you plug his win percentage for those years he would win 27-28 races in a 17 race season over a three year span. It changes your perspective on some of the old guys when you see he “only” won 27 races in his career.
Same can be said for RJ, in 88 he “only” won 7 races but there was only 10 rounds. He also won the two non sanctioned races that year that all of the big players where at due to the dispute over ran Supercross. A 70 percent win rate in a 17 race series is 12 wins.
I think I like where you are going. Percentages tell a better story.
Baseball struggles with this as well since there are a lot more games now than there were 100 years ago.
It’s hard to compare eras, but when guys didn’t race as much of course they didn’t win as much. It’s almost completely forgotten about in this sport. It’s even worse for 250/450 outdoors, a lot of the time a season was only 6 races long. Skews those numbers quite a bit.
This graph illustrates why I've always said that Villopoto has become super underrated. His dominance from 2011-2014 was on a level that we've only seen from two other guys (McGrath and Stewart).
Him retiring after essentially just 4 full years in the 450 class (his first two years were riddled with injury) kept him from perhaps being seen as #2 behind MC. He talked a little while ago about how if he had made a move to another team/environment similar to what Tomac did by switching to Star Yamaha, he thinks it could've extended his career by a few years. I know the ifs & buts conversation isn't based in any fact and ultimately means nothing, but it is interesting to think if Villopoto could've gotten to 5, 6 or maybe even 7 titles and gotten into the 50s or 60s in wins had he made a change when he was burning out.
Of course, it could be easily argued the system he was in was what led to his dominance in the first place, and had he made any changes to extend his career he wouldn't have been the same beast.
I agree. RV was unbelievable yet always underrated. It sucks that not only did he retire so early, he didn't even try when he went to Europe to get out of doing the last year of his contract in Supercross.
Has there been any other great in motocross that hated racing so much? Maybe Bradshaw? Although Damon never made it to being one of the greats.
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