Toronto Supercross - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 2

It's been a long road back to the podium for Adam. A shoulder injury in Toronto in 2014 sidelined him for the rest of the season, and then more injuries in 2015 and 2016 kept him from racing Supercross entirely. He's back, though, and he's looking faster every week. Sure, he had a couple of issues in Atlanta, but a rough race or two should be expected considering he hasn't raced Supercross in over two years. Anyway, he got a great start in Toronto and moved his way into third place pretty early into the race. He stayed there for almost the entire main event, until Joey Savatgy went down and handed him second with a few laps left. Now it sounded like he wasn't super-pumped about how he got second in the press conference, but he has to be pretty pleased with the amount of progress he has made in just three weeks. I mean a win is definitely not out of the question at this point! Heck, he could win Daytona and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. It'll be interesting to see how he does at the more outdoorsy Daytona track, which also happens to be his hometown race.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Joey was not too pumped after the race. He got a great start, but he struggled to find a way around the very aggressive Dylan Ferrandis early on, and didn't get a chance to sprint away. That allowed Osborne to stay relatively close, and once both of them got around Ferrandis it was only a matter of time until Osborne caught and passed Joey. At that point, it wasn't looking too bad for him. It wasn't his race the week–that's fine–he can take the three point hit and come back swinging next week. But then it happened: Joey crashed in the long rhythm section with just a few laps left and took a few moments to get going. He ended up crossing the line in sixth place, and he lost a decent chunk of points as a result. The gap between him and Osborne is now 12 points. Impossible to overcome? No. But will it require several wins, or a bad race for Osborne? Yes, and while anything can happen, it's not all that likely. Daytona is a big round for Joey. He needs to stop the bleeding now, or his chances of winning this championship will become very slim.

I have no idea what was going on with Alex in Toronto. He didn't look comfortable at all in his heat race, and then he struggled the entire main event. I'm not sure if he got a horrendous start, or if he had a crash that I missed during the race. But something had to have happened. A guy as talented as Alex Martin doesn't just go out and get 15th–or at least he shouldn't. I really don't know what was up, but hopefully he bounces back with a good result at Daytona... Because he could really use it.

Broc Tickle landed on the podium several times in his 250 days, but Toronto was his first career podium in the 450 class. Crazy what a good start can do, eh? Anyway, this was a pretty big step for both him and the RCH/Yoshimura/Suzuki Factory Racing team, and I'm sure that they're hoping that he can carry the momentum into Daytona. Heck, give him another great start and he might grab another podium finish.

Marvin isn't "The Bad" this week purely because of his performance. He had the flu during the week and was still feeling pretty bad on race day; there's nothing he can really do about that. But unfortunately, he did lose a ton of points in the process and now sits 39 points out of the championship lead. That is a huge amount of points to be behind by, and I think that this effectively ended his championship bid. It really sucks that a bad case of the flu is what ended his hopes of challenging Dungey, but it is what it is. Look for Marvin to be back to his normal self and running up front this coming weekend.

Malcolm just got tired and/or tight this week. He had clearly backed it down about halfway through the main event, and at one point let three guys pass him in about two turns. That's...uh, that's not good. Now I understand that he didn't have a ton of time to get testing in on the bike before joining the series, but he should have had plenty of time to do off and on the bike training. So if he did get tired, he has no excuse. But if it was arm pump, we'll give him a pass and hope that it doesn't happen again this coming weekend.