No matter how exciting the racing, final results and reputations more than anything are based on hard facts and numbers. Team managers and journalists do their share of number crunching to evaluate riders’ performances. Statistic buffs from their side can always find some ammunition for serious bench racing in the numbers itself. That’s also what we did with the following exercise.
Imagine that Saturday’s qualifying race was not merely there to pick the gate positions and entertain the crowd, but qualifying was rewarded with championship points as well! To keep things simple we applied the current GP points scoring system to the season’s MX1 qualifiers et voilà... You will see this table in jpeg above as well. It’s probably no surprise to see the dominant Tony Cairoli standing on top of this virtual classification. ‘Qualifying king’ Cairoli leads with 155 points. Whilst four riders are slipstreaming behind the Italian, only separated by a few points, it’s MX1 revelation Clément Desalle who holds the runner up spot for the moment. Of course there’s no actual value attached to these calculations yet it confirms the consistence of the 20-year old LS Motors-Honda rider. David Philippaerts and Josh Coppins are equal on points third, while Nagl is fifth.
Reaction Clément Desalle : “Now, there’s an interesting little fact: I’m virtually second in qualification standings! Seriously I like those qualifying races, it’s like a final rehearsal before the big day. It allows you to loosen up and mentally prepare for the GP. Sometimes you hear talks about the possibility of championship points being given for qualifying. I could be good idea, but in the end that’s something for the FIM and Youthstream to decide I
think.”
