Aaron Plessinger holds onto the top spot in this week’s NBC SuperMotocross Power Rankings as Eli Tomac and Justin Cooper are the biggest advancers after Round 4 of the 2024 season at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California.
Plessinger’s season has been marked with consistent strength and a red plate affixed to the front of his Red Bull KTM factory 450 courtesy of being the only rider in the field with a perfect record of top-five finishes. While that has been enough to keep him close to the front, it might not give him the Power Ranking advantage if not for his San Diego win two weeks ago and a second consecutive podium at Anaheim. In the Triple Crown format, Plessinger showed those same traits with a worst finish of sixth and podium in the final race.
Cooper Webb scored his first win of 2024 without winning a single Main Event in the Triple Crown format. Like Plessinger, he showed consistency in the form of two runner-up finishes in the first two races and a fifth in the finale. With so much parity at the top of the order, Webb’s back-to-back podiums in the last two rounds gives him momentum with a quarter of the season in the books.
Eli Tomac was the biggest advancer among the top five. At Anaheim last week he had a crisis of faith entering the finale. Finishing fifth in Race 1 and seventh in Race 2, he admitted to questioning if that was where he belonged on the grid, so his domination of the finale was extremely important. Tomac’s win in Race 3 gave him the tiebreaker over Plessinger and contributed to a second-place finish in A2.
MORE: Cooper Webb, Levi Kitchen keep parity alive
Jett Lawrence may be trying just a little too hard. Falls in the mud can hardly be counted against him, but Lawrence has also gone down on dry tracks including last week in Anaheim when he crashed from second in Race 3 and dropped to fourth at the checkers. That was enough to cost him the red plate and drop him to fourth in the SuperMotocross World Championship points. It dropped him the same degree in the Power Rankings.
Jason Anderson would have been on the podium last week if it had not been adjudged that he passed riders while off track. The two-position penalty dropped him to fourth in the overall standings, but a win in Race 2 helped propel him up the Power Rankings for two positions.
The biggest mover among the top 10 this week is rookie Justin Cooper, who posted the fastest lap in qualification in A2. His Race 1 result of 10th left something to desire, but he was fifth and sixth in the last two races and that allowed him to leapfrog several riders including Hunter Lawrence and Justin Barcia.
Rider (SMX points rank) 1. Aaron Plessinger (1) | Power Avg. 84.60 | Last Week (gain/loss) 1 (0) |
250 Rankings
Parity at the top of the order is just as strong in the 250 division but there are two riders who nevertheless managed to set themselves apart from the competition.
Levi Kitchen entered Anaheim 2 with a view of the top spot despite failing to win in the first three rounds. He came close each time, however, with a worst finish of fifth on the muddy San Diego track. In Anaheim, he was the only rider to sweep the podium in the Triple Crown format with a win in Race 1, second in Race 2 and third in the finale. That easily gave him the overall victory.
Jordon Smith has struggled in the past two rounds with falls at San Diego and in Race 2 in Anaheim. Fourth-place finishes in the first and third races contributed significant Power Ranking points, however, and allowed him to keep Kitchen in his crosshairs as the West division gives way to the East this week in Detroit.
RJ Hampshire was happy to get out of the mud. He took a pounding in on the sloppy tracks at San Francisco (ninth) and San Diego (sixth), but he made the most of the dry races with the season-opening win and his second-place overall in last week’s Triple Crown. Parity may yet be his friend as he is only eight points behind the co-leaders with nearly half the 250 West season in the books.
The season couldn’t have started much better for Garrett Marchbanks. A respectable seventh-place finish in the season opener was followed by back-to-back podiums in the mud. That was the first time in four years he’s finished that well in consecutive races. More importantly, it has put him in the championship conversation. Last week’s ninth overall cost him points, but the burden of that came in Race 2 with a 16th-place result. His other two efforts landed where he expected with a sixth in Race 1 and fifth in the finale.
It might be too late for Jo Shimoda to seriously contend for the 250 West championship - and for the moment, he needs to stop worrying about that. The pressure of assuming the Honda ride, after Jett and Hunter Lawrence swept the Supercross titles, seems to have forced him to try too hard, but it should be remembered just how well he ended 2023 in both the Pro Motocross and SuperMotocross series.
Rider (SMX points rank) 1. Levi Kitchen (1) | Power Avg. 86.00 | Last Week (gain/loss) * 3 (2) |
* The NBC Power Rankings assign 100 points to a Main event winner in Supercross and overall winner in Motocross. It awards 90 points for each Moto, Heat and Triple Crown win. The points decrement by a percentage equal to the number of starters in the field until the last place rider in each event receives three points, (five in fields of 22 riders). The Power Ranking is the average of these percentage points over the past 45 days.
2024 Power Rankings
POWER RANKINGS AFTER RD 3 AT SAN DIEGO: Unique circumstances elevate Aaron Plessinger
POWER RANKINGS AFTER RD 2 AT SAN FRANCISCO: Chase Sexton reclaims red plate
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