After Ken Roczen was the fastest qualifier in Indianapolis this year, this was Roczen’s 16th career pole position in 450 Supercross.
However, Ken Roczen has only converted one pole position into a win in 450 career. Roczen has 23 career wins and only one has come from when he was fastest qualifier!
So this lead me to want to look into three things:
- Rider’s average qualifying position in races they won
- Rider’s win from pole percentage (how often they win when on pole)
- Rider’s average race finish when on pole
For this, I’ll be looking at just the 450 Class since 2007. 2007 is when the official qualifying data is available back to. (2003-2006 has just practice times).
And since 2007, I will be looking at riders with 10 or more wins.
One quick note: I will have Chad Reed listed with 18 wins since 2007. Reed has 19 wins since 2007, however, the qualifying data from Toronto 2008 is not available so I am not including this race in the data.
Rider’s Average Qualifying Position in Races Won (Since 2007)
| Rank | Rider | Wins since 2007 | Qualifying Position in Wins |
| 1 | James Stewart | 39 | 1.41 |
| 2 | Chase Sexton | 11 | 1.55 |
| 3 | Ryan Dungey | 34 | 2.56 |
| 4 | Eli Tomac | 53 | 2.57 |
| 5 | Ryan Villopoto | 41 | 2.90 |
| 6 | Jason Anderson | 14 | 2.93 |
| 7 | Marvin Musquin | 10 | 3.00 |
| 8 | Chad Reed | 18* | 3.39 |
| 9 | Ken Roczen | 23 | 3.91 |
| 10 | Cooper Webb | 28 | 4.71 |
* = Toronto 2008 not included in data
There are 10 riders with 10 or more wins in 450 Supercross since 2007. Only Ken Roczen and Marvin Musquin do not of have championships from this group.
A few things stick out here:
- Stewart’s and Sexton’s qualifying positions being far lower than everyone else.
- Ignoring wins, James Stewart’s average qualifying position in all races was 2.36 from 2007 to 2016.
- If we leave out 2016, this drops to 1.81.
- In Stewart’s 99 races from 2007-2014, he qualified outside the Top 3 just 6 times.
- So its no surprise Stewart’s average is so low here.
- Chase Sexton’s overall qualifying average is 2.81 in all career races.
- In his 11 wins, Sexton has never qualified worse than 3rd.
- I was surprised to see Sexton as close to Stewart here, but Sexton also has a much smaller sample size here.
- Ryan Dungey is third here, I was surprised to see Dungey ahead of Villopoto in this.
- Interesting stat for Dungey, his average qualifying position in all races was better from 2008, 2010 – 2014 at 3.57 than his championship seasons.
- From 2015 – 2017, his three consecutive championships, average qualifying position in all races was 3.59
- Cooper Webb is probably who we could guess being last here. However, it is very surprising to me that he is so far behind in wins at 4.71.
- Webb has never been one to show crazy speed compared to peers, however, in his 28 wins, he is by far the lowest.
- Webb would have to win his next 8 races from pole to get his average below Roczen’s in this chart.
Rider’s Wins from Pole Percentage (Since 2007)
| Rank | Rider | Poles | Wins from Pole | Wins from Pole % |
| 1 | Ryan Villopoto | 19 | 11 | 57.89% |
| 2 | Ryan Dungey | 25 | 13 | 52.00% |
| 3 | James Stewart | 59 | 30 | 50.85% |
| 4 | Chad Reed | 12 | 6 | 50.00% |
| 5 | Eli Tomac | 44 | 20 | 45.45% |
| 6 | Cooper Webb | 6 | 2 | 33.33% |
| 7 | Chase Sexton | 26 | 7 | 26.92% |
| 8 | Jason Anderson | 16 | 4 | 25.00% |
| 9 | Marvin Musquin | 11 | 1 | 9.09% |
| 10 | Ken Roczen | 16 | 1 | 6.25% |
This is again from riders with 10+ total wins from 2007. We can see Roczen and Musquin well below the others in this list.
The Top 5 here are all around 50%, seems about right. Cooper Webb is at 33.33%, however, he only has six total pole positions in his 450 Supercross career.
What is surprising here is to see Chase Sexton much lower than the rest of the group. Sexton has a lot of pole positions with 26, however, he is not converted those to wins very often.
Seeing Anderson, Musquin and Roczen lower isn’t too surprising. However, Roczen having just 16 poles, the same as Anderson in Roczen’s 156 career races is lower than I would have expected. And to then only convert one into a win is quite surprising for a rider with the speed that Roczen has had.
Rider’s Average Race Finish when on Pole Since 2007
This is the inverse of the first table we looked at.
| Rank | Rider | Poles | Race Finish Avg when on Pole |
| 1 | Ryan Villopoto | 19 | 2.00 |
| 2 | Ryan Dungey | 25 | 2.68 |
| 3 | Marvin Musquin | 11 | 2.90 |
| 4 | Cooper Webb | 6 | 3.17 |
| 5 | Eli Tomac | 44 | 3.98 |
| 6 | Chad Reed | 12 | 4.00 |
| 7 | Chase Sexton | 26 | 4.08 |
| 8 | James Stewart | 59 | 4.31 |
| 9 | Jason Anderson | 16 | 4.38 |
| 10 | Ken Roczen | 16 | 5.06 |
As mentioned before Roczen has just one win from pole and has the worst finish among riders here.
- In fact Roczen has a better race finish average when qualifies between second and fifth at 4.89.
- Roczen is the only rider among the 10 listed here who has a better average race finish when he qualifies between 2nd and 5th versus pole position.
Quite a parallel with Villopoto and Dungey first and second here vs Anderson and Roczen in ninth and tenth. I guess that the difference between RV’s and Dungey’s 8 titles vs just 1 between Anderson and Roczen.
James Stewart and Chase Sexton once again right next to each other. Sexton’s 450 Supercross career seems to becoming more similar to Stewart’s. Sexton doesn’t have the crazy speed separation that Stewart had over his peers. However, Sexton is mostly the fastest guy but isn’t translating this into the wins he probably should be getting.
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