Budds Creek - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Motocross Feature

250 Class

The Good: Adam Cianciarulo | 1st Overall

Holy guacamole! Adam finally won an overall! I'm stoked, he's stoked, the team's stoked, everyone on the forum is stoked. It's literally impossible to not be happy for him. He's been through so many injuries, and so many moments where he wasn't even sure if he wanted to continue racing, but he kept on coming back to the line and was able to get it done. And to make the weekend even better, he re-signed with Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki for a couple of more seasons. Good stuff, and I'd say he definitely earned his Chipotle this time.

Now he, and everyone else, will start looking to next year. Yeah, 2017 was a great building year for him. He made every race, avoided injury, podiumed several times, won races indoors and out, and secured a job for the foreseeable future. But it was a building year, and 2018 is when we should see Adam in perhaps the best form of his career. He'll have an entire season and off season under his belt, as well as the confidence level of a title contender. So with that in mind, I think we're going to see him fight for titles in Supercross and motocross next year, and possibly win one....or two.

The Good Bonus: Zach Osborne | 2nd Overall

Adam Cianciarulo may have won the day, but Zach Osborne is the champion. I just talked about how many injuries Adam went through before he got his first career outdoor win, but Zach waited ten years to win this championship...which is an, uh...decent amount of time. And he absolutely deserves this championship. He was by far the most consistent rider in the class, and he was able to overcome all kinds of adversity throughout the season. Bad starts, bike trying to poop out on him, early race crashes, Matthes claiming he "brought" him back to the United States, none of it could take him down. And as a result, he holds the number one plate.

So, what's next? Well, he still has one more race where he's going to try and put a stamp on the season, but after that it's off to Great Britain for the Motocross of Nations, where he'll be the Captain of Team USA. Then he'll start preparing to defend his 250 East Supercross title in 2018, followed by racing the 450 class outdoors. Oh yeah, he also can pick a single digit number if he wants... I have my money on him taking the eight (Langston made that rumor even more credible during the broadcast), but we'll just have to wait and see.

The Bad: Dylan Ferrandis | 17th Overall

The sneaky Frenchman was fast but maybe a little too sneaky this weekend because we never really saw him. He went down in the first turn of moto one and clawed his way back to 15th, but he didn't start the second moto and I haven't heard a thing about him since. Hopefully he didn't pick up some sort of injury (edit: current rumor is that he broke his wrist) because he does have the Motocross of Nations coming up, and I'm certain he doesn't want to miss out on a chance to help Team France claim yet another victory.

Also, not trying to pile on to what was a rough weekend for him, but his struggles at Budds Creek pretty much eliminated him from earning a two-digit career number this year, bummer.

The Ugly: Joey Savatgy | DNS

Joey Savatgy has been riding incredibly recently and making us wish he rode like that all season, but his momentum came to a halt at Budds Creek as he went down hard in qualifying and wasn't able to race. According to his Instagram he's "good", but I'm not sure if we should take that as an "I'm in" for Indiana. I'd like to see him out there, sure, but if he's not 100% he should just call it a season. No use in risking further injury when he's not fighting for the championship, but that's just what I think. I'm sure we'll find out more about his status as the week progresses.

450 Class

The Good: Justin Bogle | 1st Overall

We all kind of thought that Justin might start competing for wins at least semi-regularly after winning a moto at Thunder Valley, but it never really came to fruition. He returned to hovering between fifth-to-ninth, and didn't compete for anymore wins...until Budds Creek. Some people will try to say that he got lucky because Marvin Musquin got a bad start, but he was running Musquin's pace for the majority of the moto. Sure, Musquin showed that he has a bit more stamina when he turned it on at the end, but Justin maintained his composure until the checkered flag flew and took the win. He then backed it up with a third in the second moto, which was good enough for the overall win. It was truly a great performance for the soon-to-be free agent, and I bet that this will help him out quite a bit in his current contract negotiations. It'll be interesting to see where he ends up next year, and if he can start putting together these kinds of rides more consistently.

The Bad: Cooper Webb | 7th Overall

Not the best day for Cooper. He kind of just hung out in ninth the entire first moto and finished there. He did look a bit more racey in the second moto, but he eventually fell off the pace and settled into seventh. Not terrible, but not great. He's someone who's going to be looking for a much better 2018 season, because while he's shown flashes of speed this year, it has been a bit underwhelming overall (even for a rookie). Heck, at this point I bet he's counting down the days until he can race the 2018 YZ450F.

The Ugly: The Season is Almost Over

It feels like A1 was yesterday, and Hangtown was this morning. Basically, this year went by fast. I mean, we only have one round left! I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with myself once we're in full-blown off-season mode. Sure, we have the USGP, MXoN, and Monster Cup, but we also have a few months without any racing. It's gonna be weird, guys, but I'm sure the forum will keep all of us entertained.