Posts
2522
Joined
9/16/2009
Location
Portland, OR
US
Fantasy
169th
OK, I'm sure all (most) have been watching the series as close as I have. We have heard from the commentators all about "statement rides" "exclamation marks" etc. But the results of this series still baffle me on a race to race level. We have riders like Roczen, Tomac and to a lesser extent Webb being all over the place on results race to race. Last week, all we read was how everyone was scratching their heads on how Roczen got 9th while Cooper rode a good race protecting his lead. Everyone was talking about how Kenny was in the midst of his "typical" late season fade. Then on Tuesday we saw Kenny win convincingly and Webb struggled. We heard how the team found something and Kenny "was back" and heard and read that Cooper struggled due to the pressure, and he was "trying to manage the points lead" while others said he simply cant ride whoops. Now tonight, we see Ken get out to a pretty large lead and Coop is riding ok but not setting the world on fire. Ken has a small crash in the whoops but remounts with a 6ish second lead. Coop runs him down and makes the pass and sort of walks away to a win. Now the talk is how Kenny is still struggling late in the race and how Coop is like the terminator late in the races. Meanwhile, Tomac is putting up results all over the map (9, 2, 3 1,5 etc.). WTF is the deal here? Its all over the place. I guess it boils down to "the field is deep bro" but god damn, I've never seen anything like it.
The top three guys were on the podium tonight, just not in the order I wanted them to be in.
The Shop
Hope he gets it sorted out before the out door season
Of course part of it is once Webb saw that happened he turned up to 11 and was really hanging it out.
After the fall, he seemed to choose caution over fight.
He was consistent, just slower.
1:36.868 1:36.129 1:36.970 1:37.048 1:36.713 1:36.528 1:37.593 1:39.368 1:46.217 1:40.207 1:40.248 1:40.808 1:40.142
He can still find the speed to drop a field of champs. Folks need to re-educate themselves on Ken’s reconstruction. The guy should be on disability, but we’re talking about how the hell he got 2nd instead of 1st.
Cooper on the other hand doesn’t have the finesse of Ken or the brute force like Eli. But he’s like the weasel that keeps breaking into the hen house. You’ll think someone else has the win locked up and next thing you know theres a hole chewed through the corrugated metal siding and your prized egg layer has been reduced to a pile of blood and feathers. It’s frustrating to watch because there’s never been a night when he’s the fastest guy on the track. From the sidelines the way to beat him seems almost painfully obvious, so these races are like pulling teeth when you have to sit around and watch better guys lose.
Looking at segment times, Ken really lost the race in the whoops where he crashed. He had :32s and :33s
Prior to the crash, after, :34s. There was little drop off in other segments.
He just couldn’t attack and blitz after falling.
It’s still a race to the end, right? Did they change it to a lap time competition?
Webb saw all this and decided to go for it, riding on the edge and it paid off.
As I mentioned before, Kenny still held off Tomac so it is not like he was going slow. Eli was trying to catch him.
Pit Row
But it is a question of risk, isn’t it. Do you think Ken was riding to secure second in the championship?
Was cutting the gap to ten not worth the chance of crashing? Or is he not even thinking of points, just his health? It’s all interesting, but really unknowable. Ken might not know, and just reacted instinctively.
TP199, KW14, RC4 id imagine still have the ability to turn super fast one-off laps, does this mean they should be champ?
They didn’t find anything this late in the series. When Ken wins he just rode better than everyone else and made less mistakes. That is all. I just wish people would stop with the excuses. When Coop wins, it’s because he rode great. Same for Tomac. These 3 are special riders there’s no reason to take anything away from any one of them when they win (or lose for that matter.)
Paternity is a well known testosterone diminisher.
Eli will come good again.
Yeah definitely something wrong with those teams.
Post a reply to: Cant make heads or tails of this