With 10 rounds of Supercross in 2024 in the books, Jett Lawrence now has a 21 point lead over Cooper Webb and is in command of the series.
So how do his first 10 Supercross starts compare historically to other riders? I’ll compare Wins, Podiums, Top 5s, Average Finish and Laps Led for the years we have data available.
Keep in mind this is the rider’s first 10 starts in the Premier Class, not exclusively their rookie season starts. So this will include Jeremy McGrath’s 1992 starts, Chad Reed’s 2002 starts, Dungey’s 2008 starts, etc. The reason I am doing this is, for example, Jimmy Ellis’ rookie year was 1975 and he won every race…there were 4 races that year. I don’t think that is a great comparison given the series length nowadays and that’s a smaller sample size.
Lets get to the data:
Wins
| Rank | Rider | Year(s) for first 10 Starts | Wins |
| 1 | Jimmy Ellis | 1975-1976 | 6 |
| 2 | James Stewart | 2005-2006 | 5 |
| Bob Hannah | 1976-1977 | 5 | |
| Jett Lawrence | 2024 | 5 | |
| 5 | Damon Bradshaw | 1989-1990 | 3 |
| 6 | Ryan Dungey | 2008, 2010 | 2 |
| Tony DiStefano | 1974-1977 | 2 | |
| Chad Reed | 2002-2003 | 2 | |
| David Vuillemin | 1999-2000 | 2 | |
| Jeremy McGrath | 1992-1993 | 2 | |
| Marty Smith | 1975-1977 | 2 |
- Jett is tied for second with James Stewart and Bob Hannah for winning 5 of their first 10 races.
- Jimmy Ellis debuted in 1975 and swept the 4 race season winning all 4 rounds.
- Damon Bradshaw won in his second and third career start.
- Jeremy McGrath didn’t win until his 9th career start.
Podiums
| Rank | Rider | Year(s) for first 10 Starts | Podiums |
| 1 | James Stewart | 2005-2006 | 8 |
| 2 | Jimmy Ellis | 1975-1976 | 7 |
| 3 | Bob Hannah | 1976-1977 | 6 |
| Pierre Karsmakers | 1974-1977 | 6 | |
| Jim Pomeroy | 1974-1977 | 6 | |
| Trey Canard | 2010-2011 | 6 | |
| Jett Lawrence | 2024 | 6 | |
| 8 | Damon Bradshaw | 1989-1990 | 5 |
| Ryan Dungey | 2008, 2010 | 5 | |
| Chad Reed | 2002-2003 | 5 | |
| Ken Roczen | 2011-2014 | 5 | |
| Broc Glover | 1977-1980 | 5 | |
| Kent Howerton | 1974-1976 | 5 |
- Jett comes in tied for third with 6 podiums in his first 10 starts.
- I was a little surprised to see James Stewart had 8 podiums in his first 10 starts, I thought that he was more inconsistent to start his career but he leads the list here.
- How about Trey Canard! Canard raced 6 races in 2010 while still a full time 250 rider and podiumed 5 times!
- Damon Bradshaw podiumed his first ever premier class start at just age 16!
Top 5s
| Rank | Rider | Year(s) for first 10 Starts | Top 5s |
| 1 | James Stewart | 2005-2006 | 10 |
| 2 | Bob Hannah | 1976-1977 | 8 |
| Pierre Karsmakers | 1974-1977 | 8 | |
| Trey Canard | 2010-2011 | 8 | |
| Ryan Dungey | 2008, 2010 | 8 | |
| Jett Lawrence | 2024 | 8 | |
| 7 | Jimmy Ellis | 1975-1976 | 7 |
| Tony DiStefano | 1974-1977 | 7 | |
| Josh Grant | 2008-2009 | 7 | |
| Mike Bell | 1976-1978 | 7 |
- Jett is tied for second with 8.
- Once again, I didn’t realize how consistent Stew was in his first 10 premier class starts
- And how about Josh Grant, 7 Top 5s!
Average Finish
| Rank | Rider | Year(s) for first 10 Starts | Average Finish |
| 1 | James Stewart | 2005-2006 | 2.30 |
| 2 | Jett Lawrence | 2024 | 3.10 |
| 3 | Pierre Karsmakers | 1974-1977 | 3.60 |
| Ryan Dungey | 2008, 2010 | 3.60 | |
| 5 | Bob Hannah | 1976-1977 | 3.80 |
| 6 | Ken Roczen | 2011-2014 | 4.50 |
| 7 | Tony DiStefano | 1974-1977 | 4.70 |
| 8 | Kent Howerton | 1974-1976 | 4.80 |
| 9 | Trey Canard | 2010-2011 | 5.10 |
| Jimmy Ellis | 1975-1976 | 5.10 | |
| Chad Reed | 2002-2003 | 5.10 |
- Jett second, only behind James Stewart
- Roczen is 6th, Roczen had 4 starts in the 450 Class before moving up full time in 2014
- I would have though Chad Reed would have been higher here, but an 18th at one round makes his average worse here
Laps Led
Lap Data is only available back to 2003, so this list will only include laps 2003 to present.
| Rank | Rider | Year(s) for first 10 Starts | Laps Led |
| 1 | Jett Lawrence | 2024 | 130 |
| 2 | James Stewart | 2005-2006 | 103 |
| 3 | Ryan Dungey | 2008, 2010 | 57 |
| 4 | Chad Reed | 2002-2003 | 53 |
| 5 | Adam Cianciarulo | 2020-2021 | 37 |
| 6 | Justin Barcia | 2013 | 20 |
| 7 | Ken Roczen | 2011-2014 | 15 |
| 8 | Josh Grant | 2008-2009 | 14 |
| Joey Savatgy | 2019 | 14 | |
| Jason Lawrence | 2009-2010 | 14 |
- Jett beats Stew here in total laps led.
- Jett and Stew are clearly a level above the rest here.
- All of Jason Lawrence’s laps led come from Daytona 2009 when he nearly won.
- Chad Reed didn’t lead any laps in his 4 races in 2002. (this data isn’t available publicly but I quickly watched those races on YouTube and he never was in the lead)
Laps Led Percentage
| Rank | Rider | Laps | Laps Led | Laps Led % |
| 1 | James Stewart | 183 | 103 | 56.28% |
| 2 | Jett Lawrence | 255 | 130 | 50.98% |
| 3 | Ryan Dungey | 190 | 57 | 30.00% |
| 4 | Chad Reed* | 192 | 53 | 27.60% |
| 5 | Adam Cianciarulo | 238 | 37 | 15.55% |
| 6 | Justin Barcia | 162 | 20 | 12.35% |
| 7 | Jason Lawrence | 119 | 14 | 11.76% |
| 8 | Josh Grant | 186 | 14 | 7.53% |
| 9 | Ken Roczen | 200 | 15 | 7.50% |
| 10 | Chase Sexton | 171 | 10 | 5.85% |
- With the percentages, Stewart leads over Jett in the first 10 starts.
- * = Like I said above, Chad Reed didn’t lead any laps in his 4 races in 2002 – I added those laps to his count. For Dallas 2002, it looks like he pulled off after lap 12. So this one is a bit of an estimate.
- I have a minimum of 10 starts for this list, without that, Jeremy Martin has led 10 laps in his first four Premier Class starts, at a 8.85% rate.
One rider that interestingly never showed up on any of these data tables is Ricky Carmichael, in his first 10 starts in 1999, Ricky had 0 Podiums, just 2 Top 5s, and an average finish of 11.30.
Back to Jett.
Jett Lawrence has been extremely impressive in his first 10 starts and now is clearly in control of the series. In my opinion, unless he gets injured, I don’t see how he could lose the title and I think he continues to rack up more and more wins. It seems like he got the small rookie mistakes out of the way in the first few rounds and didn’t lose meaningful points in the process. If it wasn’t for his mistake in Arlington, he would be on 4 straight wins at the moment. (And I think if he doesn’t hit Vince Friese in the whoops, he would have passed Webb back for the lead.)
While Jett hasn’t had a crazy +20 second victory or anything, to me, it feels like he is in more control when running with a 5 second lead when compared to when James Stewart was out 15 seconds ahead of 2nd place. I think this is mainly because Jett hasn’t had many big crashes in his career. Obviously there was the the 2020 rookie 250 season crash where he broke his collarbone chasing Dylan Ferrandis. But other than that its probably the mid air collision with Forkner? I think that was more of a racing incident (with Jett more to blame though).
The scary part in all of this is that Jett is only going to get better. I’m not gonna lie, when he gets a good start, I am kind of bummed knowing that the race is probably his. And through Birmingham, he had the 3rd best holeshot average in the 450 class…
67 to go.
Thanks for reading! Any questions, hit me up on Twitter or Instagram: @MXReference
