Current Win Rates:
Jett Lawrence currently has the best win rate in 450 MX history. He has won 16/17 races (94.12%). Ricky Carmichael won 76/88 of his races for a win rate of 86.36%.
To put those numbers into context, no other rider in MX history is even above 50%. Ryan Dungey was at 52.00% before his return to racing in 2022 dropped it to 44.83%.
Jett already has Carmichael covered in terms of races to get to 16 wins. It took Carmichael 23 races to Jett’s 17. However, Carmichael was younger when he reached 16 wins albeit by 18 days!
Can Jett keep it up? If he can maintain this historic win rate, he would reach his 76th win in his 81st race which, if he lines up at every race until then, would be around round 9 of the 2030 season. He would be only be 26 years old.
Alternative Win Rates:
Since Jett’s 94.12% win rate is likely unsustainable, although I wouldn’t put it past him, let’s look at his path to 76 with other win rates.
If Jett *drops* to Carmichael’s 86.36% win rate from this point on, he would still be on pace to hit 76 wins faster than Carmichael by just one race. It would take him 87 races and the 76th win would be around round 6 in 2031 when he is 27 years old.
If Jett drops to Dungey’s pre-2022 win rate of 52.00%, it would take Jett until around round 6 in 2035 when he is 31 years old! That would be 133 total races to get to 76. That scenario is highly unlikely because only three riders in history have raced more than 133 450 MX races.
Strength of Competition:
These race to 76 projections don’t take into account any external factors like injuries, weather, or strength of competition. But I did calculate the average total wins among Jett and Carmichael’s competition at each race across their careers to compare the two riders further.
Carmichael’s competitors totaled up an average of 23.44 450 overall wins at any given race. Jett’s competition average 19.29 total career wins.
If Eli Tomac (32) and Chase Sexton (13) contend at each round of the 2025 series, their 45 combined wins, and possibly more, will likely pull Jett’s competitor average way up.
Carmichael never faced a rider with more than 15 wins at the time of the race. Jeremy McGrath had 15 career wins at the time of two matchups vs RC in 2000 and 2004 (not racing full time). Mike LaRocco had 11 when he raced RC in the 2000 season.
In fairness to Carmichael, he was so dominant that no one was able to accumulate a lot of wins while he was racing, keeping that 23.44 average down.
More Strength of Competition:
Digging a little deeper, we look at the wins of riders when racing against vs not racing against Carmichael and Jett.
Of the 16 riders that were 450 MX winners and competed against Carmichael, only 5 of them managed to win a race with him in it: James Stewart (3), Kevin Windham (3), David Vuillemin (3), Sebastien Tortelli (2), Tim Ferry (1).
15 of those 16 riders had a better win percentage when racing without Carmichael except for Vuillemin. His three wins vs RC were his only three career MX wins.
The breakdown for Jett is much shorter. Only one rider has managed a win against him, Chase Sexton (1), and all winners he competed against have better win percentages without him.
I hope this analysis helped show how great Carmichael was and how sensational Jett’s career has been so far. After reading do you think Jett can reach 76?
Instagram post version of this is on my page @smxmuse
I think these conversations are fun. I think what makes RC’s win record so awesome is the longevity and major injury free. RC won every outdoor title he completed in, 125/250-450 ,Jett has already missed out on the title last year. Long way to go but anything is possible.
I think Jett stands a better chance of beating RC's MX record than MC's SX record.
Jett’s injury rate appears to be higher than RC’s…. I have no idea if he will be injured “more” than RC was or not. But that is what changes this outcome one way or the other more than any other factor.
No because he’s not gonna be doing much winning anymore once 38 moves up. Enjoy it while it lasts guys!😛
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Anything is possible. We put a man on the moon.
Disappointment awaits you my friend.
Wow, you have a lot of time on your hands. Well done!
imho Jett has more competition than RC had.......RC had reed , K dub and bubbles who were all realistically capable of winning motos ..........but not all at the same time .
Jett has .........Chase , Eli (for maybe longer now) , Hunta, Prado(eventually) , Webb(?), Cooper, AP and likely Deegs (eventually).................
Jett may get past 50 thou.
I for one enjoy watching both of them race & compete but I’m so ready & intrigued by the potential bench racing debates between the extreme jetties & the extreme deegan bedbugs 😂 🍿
I totally disagree.
We are talking about overalls here - who in the current group is capable of doing a 1-1 vs Jett (or at least a 2-1)?
As a Jett fan i can honestly say........
ELI
CHASE
HUNTER
PRADO (eventually)
DEEGAN (eventually)
are all "capable"...not necessarilly 1-1 s thou but def overalls......outdoors can get tricky with weather, bad starts, mechanicals yadda yadda
remember we are talking GETTING to 76 wins so you need abit of a crystal ball.
dare a say (as a jett fan) i'm not expecting jett going 11-0 outdoors this season either even if he stays healthy (Chase gets 2, ELI at least 1, hunter steals 1 as well) !!!!!!!!!!
If Chase and Eli line up every week it wont be easy. They’re good enough that anything less than perfect can be punished.
Eli is gonna win some motos for sure. Jett should be careful what he wished for in wsnting to race beast mode. It might help him get better. But its going to humble him at times.
Carmichael went from mid 03 to the 06 opener without losing an overall. Just absolutely insane. I don’t think Jett gets there to his win total. But I do think he is the best chance anyone has ever had.
I think he can do it if the injuries don’t pop up every other year. You have to consider RC retired at 27 which is close to being a racers prime age for winning races. If RC stuck around for a few more seasons he may have topped 100. Keep Jett away from Baker and he may race into his 30’s
It is pretty crazy how dominant jett is in an era with the deepest competition weve ever seen. Kid really is on another level.
Stews outdoor record speaks for itself, but often overlooked is that Reedy was actually a badass outdoors, 5 years after RC left, he decided to do outdoors again and was a title threat against both Ryan’s in their prime. He also won a Moto at MXDN, we just don’t talk about how good Reed actually was because RC was just on a whole entire other level.. he is called the GOAT for a reason
Pit Row
I have a feeling it's going to be a lot like when Stewart moved up & we'll realise that one has the other covered 9 times out of 10
So without doing any digging myself was there more races in Carmichael's day?
12 rounds of MX opposed to only 11 now? Do we need to adjust for that?
Jett has the capability it seems to do it, time will tell. Hope he can stay healthy like RC did.
Honestly, ET3 had it too. Remember he has missed out on multiple MX seasons due to injury.
I also disagree with the deep field comment. RC had it the same had Jett does. A couple of guys who can honestly compete with him, but the curve drops off quickly after that. Jett has ET3 and CS4 then you will get some flyers who have a good race here and there and the top guys have bad luck. RC had JS7 (for a short bit and RC quit right away), and CR22.
All the greats had healthy fields to contend with. It's only in retrospect that we call the fields weak because they were so dominant.
if he stays healthy, yes. Easy. RC retiring at 27 would be considered "early retirement" nowadays. Jett could race 5 extra seasons. And let's be honest - the only racer that has straight up beaten Jett is Jett himself with injuries. If he's on the track, he's been in the lead.
This crap again?? Likely jett will burn out in a year or two.
How does Jett compare to RC in wins vs races held? His percentage of wins to starts is phenomenal, but if you miss a bunch of races then..
His ride at Pala was amazing, how good does a guy have to be to lead every lap after a long break? I thought he’d podium for sure, but to dominate like that was mind blowing.
(LARGE SIGH) The kid has already missed out on 2 championships because of injuries...In MX, RC NEVER lost an outdoor title he lined up for. Part-time '07 season doesn't count he wasn't going to race the full schedule. He should have. Would have been an easy 8th 250 title in a row... He was leading the points until he stopped.
side note: JS7 never went 1-1 against RC straight up. RC got hurt moto 1 Glen Helen '06.
Let's just throw KW14 under the bus?
Where's the stat where, if you toss RC out, then KW has a huge list of wins instead of a huge list of 2nd places?
It’s no secret that I hold Jett above any other rider in the world, but after the last two years with all the amount of different drama i doubt that we get to see him race in his 30’s.
Injuries, trashy behavior from the crowd/”fans” constant pressure of always being the clear favorite each time that you line up will wear you down really hard.
And from the outside it looks that he has plenty of other interests in his life outside of MX.
But one thing I wish is that he would do one MXGP season before he hangs it up. And does it while in full prime, not in the half assed way that RV did it to get out of his contract.
He has already won everything he can win in the states, now it’s just down to how many times he can do it.
This is a huge point and I think the win rate comparison is absolutely worthless without it
His actual win rate right now is 70% I think (16 wins out of 2 seasons + 1)
This is not to discredit Jett, or to say it’s not possible, but you have to be in it to win it, and RC always was
Windham had 26 450 class 2nd place overalls and 19 of those were Carmichael wins!
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