Grand National Champions: Advanced Analytics

Back in the early 1980’s there was a concept of a Grand National Champion where they crowned the rider who scored the most points across motocross and supercross. From what I’ve been able to gather, it was only done in 1983 and 1984 and in both years it was David Bailey that took the crown.  There’s been some murmurs lately of bringing this concept back and it got me wondering who would’ve been the Grand National Champion for every year.

So here you have it!  Below is a dashboard that lets you look up the ranking of every single rider for every single year.

Some interesting Grand National Champion stats going all the way back to 1972…
–  There’s been 24 different riders who would’ve gotten the crown (including 2021)
–  Ricky Carmichael would’ve gotten the crown the most (6x – 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006)
–  Ricky Carmichael scored the most combined points of any season with 961 points across 28 races (34 pts/race) in 2005
–  Mark Barnett scored the least combined points of any season with 561 points across 20 races (28 pts/race) in 1982
–  Of the current riders, Eli Tomac would’ve won it the most (3x – 2017, 2019, 2020)
–  On current pace, Ken Roczen will win it a 2nd time (2016, 2021) as he currently holds a 59 point lead over Eli Tomac
–  Maybe the most surprising winner would’ve been John Dowd in 1998. Another notch in the New England legends awesome career.
– 11 riders would’ve won it once.

You can use the dashboard below to find where your favorite rider ranked in any given year.

Use the YEAR filter below to see the standings going all the way back to 1985. You can also use the SERIES and CLASS filters to see who would’ve won between MX vs. SX and 125/250F vs. 250/450F/500