Predictions · Model + editorial

Predictions

Career rates for the riders expected on the gate — win and podium share, average finish, and a 3σ finishing band — straight from the same dataset the app reads, alongside our editorial calls.

The model, live forecast

Auto-generated from the same dataset the app reads. These are each rider's career rates over their recorded starts — the share of races won and podiumed, average finish, and the 3σ band — ranked by win share. They are history, not calibrated odds for one round, so they do not sum to 100% across the field. Updates the moment new results post. Injured, wildcard and withdrawn riders excluded.

450 Model Forecast

250 Model Forecast

The call, editorial preview · SMX Playoff 1

Pro Motocross is settled. What follows is a different championship with different rules, and the first thing to understand about it is that almost nothing carries over.

September · Three rounds · Playoff 1, Playoff 2, Final

SMX Playoffs

Hybrid tracks · Two motos per round · Points on the round overall

Seeding comes from combined Supercross and Pro Motocross points, and then those points are thrown away. The top 20 in a class auto-qualify and restart on the seeding scale, 25 for the top seed down to 2 for the twentieth; seeds 21 to 30 race a Wild Card for the last two spots and start on zero. Payouts escalate: standard at Playoff 1, double at Playoff 2, triple at the Final, which means the last round is worth 75 for a win and the championship is rarely settled before it.

Changed since we wrote this

Jett Lawrence is not racing

Lawrence withdrew from all three playoff rounds on September 2 and has ankle surgery on the 9th. He had earned the fourth seed and 18 points. Seeds are not redrawn when a rider withdraws, so the seat stays empty rather than promoting everyone below it — the riders behind him keep the points they earned and simply have one fewer rider to pass. Every pick on this page is made without him, and the model forecast above drops him automatically. He had won all three SMX titles contested so far.

450 · What the seeding actually buys

1
Hunter Lawrence
SX 346 + MX 474 = 820 · resets to 25 Top seed by 230 combined points, which is the largest gap anywhere on either seeding sheet, and it converts into a three-point head start on Prado. That is the whole reward. He is the most complete rider of 2026 across both disciplines and arrives having just won a title by two points, which is its own kind of preparation.
2
Jorge Prado
SX 189 + MX 401 = 590 · seeded 2nd, resets to 22 Second seed, three points back before a gate drops, and he closed the outdoor season with the only 1-1 of his year. Hybrid tracks borrow from both disciplines, which suits the one rider near the top of this sheet with a real Supercross season and a real outdoor season behind him. Jett Lawrence's withdrawal also removes the rider most likely to take motos off him.
3
Haiden Deegan
SX 0 + MX 404 = 404 · seeded 7th, resets to 15 Third outdoors without winning a round, and he carries no Supercross points into the combination, so he starts ten behind Hunter Lawrence. He moved up a class this year, which under the cross-class rule means his 250SX West title contributes nothing here. Ten points across three rounds, the last paying triple, is not a real deficit.
4
Ken Roczen
SX 349 + MX 0 = 349 · seeded 10th, resets to 12 The Supercross champion did not race outdoors, so the format seeds him tenth and gives him 12 points. Whether that is a fair representation of a 450SX title is the argument the SMX format has been having with itself since it launched. Thirteen points off the top seed is the largest gap we are willing to pick through.
5
Cooper Webb
SX 315 + MX 264 = 579 · seeded 3rd, resets to 20 Third seed without winning a round in either series, which is the seeding doing exactly what it is built to do: reward the rider who showed up twice. It is also why he starts five ahead of Deegan despite finishing well behind him outdoors. The seed is better than the form.

250 · What the seeding actually buys

1
Cole Davies
SX 231 + MX 407 = 638 · resets to 25 The only rider on either sheet who won a championship in both disciplines this year, 250SX East and 250MX. Top seed, and the closest thing the 250 class has to a favourite.
2
Levi Kitchen
SX 177 + MX 364 = 541 · resets to 22 Second seed despite finishing third outdoors, because his Supercross season was stronger than the riders immediately around him. He ends the summer on a scoreless Ironman, which is the opposite of momentum, but the reset is exactly the mechanism that makes that not matter.
3
Chance Hymas
SX 38 + MX 364 = 402 · seeded 4th, resets to 18 Level on outdoor points with Kitchen and the strongest rider in the class over the closing month, 47 points at Budds Creek and 47 at Ironman. A thin Supercross season costs him two seeds and four points, which is the cheapest price anyone on this page pays for a bad spring.
4
Ryder DiFrancesco
SX 164 + MX 326 = 490 · seeded 3rd, resets to 20 Third seed on combined points, ahead of both riders he finished behind outdoors, because he was the more consistent of them in Supercross. Two points clear of Hymas before anyone races.
5
Julien Beaumer
SX 0 + MX 369 = 369 · seeded 5th, resets to 17 Runner-up outdoors and winner of the finale, but no Supercross points at all, so second in Pro Motocross seeds him fifth. He gets 17 where Davies gets 25, and he has three rounds to find those eight points.
The format's own thumb on the scale

Missing a season costs more than losing one

Jett Lawrence finished two points off the outdoor title and was seeded fourth before he withdrew. Ken Roczen won the Supercross championship and is seeded tenth. Neither result reflects how fast either rider is; both reflect that the seeding rewards contesting both series over winning one. If you want a single number for it: Roczen's 450SX championship is worth 12 seeding points, and Cooper Webb's third place in that same championship, plus a mid-pack outdoor season, is worth 20.

Sleeper · 450

Eli Tomac

Seeded eighth on 396 combined. He did not race between Fox Raceway and Spring Creek and still finished the outdoor season with 121 points and a fifth at Ironman, his best ride since returning. He is the one rider in the top ten whose seeding is built on a partial season rather than a full one, which usually means the number understates him.

Variance flag

The triple-points Final

75 points for winning the last round, against 25 for winning the first. A rider can lose Playoff 1 badly and still take the championship, and the seeding advantage that looks decisive on paper, three points between the top two 450 seeds, is worth about one position in one moto by the time the Final multiplier applies. Expect the standings after Playoff 1 to mislead.

Key questions going in

1Question

Who actually inherits Jett Lawrence's absence?

The obvious answer is Hunter Lawrence, who no longer has to beat the rider who has won every playoff series ever run. The less obvious answer is Prado and Webb, seeded second and third, who spend three rounds racing for positions rather than for whatever was left after the brothers had finished. A format that resets everyone to within 13 points was already close. It just lost the one rider who has never failed to win it.

2Question

Is Cole Davies about to win a third championship in one year?

250SX East in the spring, 250MX in the summer, and now the top seed in the playoffs. No rider on either sheet has a stronger claim to 2026. The reset takes his 38-point outdoor cushion and reduces it to three over Kitchen, which is the format doing what it is designed to do: making the season we just watched count for very little.

3Question

Who comes through the Wild Card?

Two spots from seeds 21 to 30, and the qualifiers start on zero, which in a three-round series with escalating points is close to unrecoverable. In the 450 class Mitchell Harrison sits 21st on 190 combined, three points outside the cut. In the 250 class Casey Cochran is 21st on 148. Both would be racing for a start rather than a title.

4Question

Does a 250 rider who moved up get penalised twice?

Haiden Deegan won 250SX West and then rode 450 outdoors. Under the cross-class rule he is seeded in the class he finished the outdoor season in, and only the points earned in that class travel with him, so a championship he won this year contributes nothing to his seeding. He starts on 15 where a rider with a mediocre 450SX season and a mediocre 450MX season could start higher.

How we did: Round 10 scorecard

The running record of our editorial calls. New scorecards get added here, oldest at the bottom.

450 · Budds Creek · 4 of 5

Jett Lawrence, picked 1st
actual: 4th · 5-2In the top five, but we had the wrong brother at the top.
Hunter Lawrence, picked 2nd
actual: 1st · 1-1We said the speed was never the issue and second was the projection. He won both motos.
Jorge Prado, picked 3rd
actual: 2nd · 3-3Called on track fit rather than form. Right for the stated reason.
Haiden Deegan, picked 4th
actual: 3rd · 2-4One place better than called.
Garrett Marchbanks, picked 5th
actual: 11th · 9-11We flagged the volatility as the risk and picked him anyway. The risk showed up.

250 · Budds Creek · 3 of 5

Cole Davies, picked 1st
actual: 2nd · 1-3Won Moto 1, faded to third in Moto 2, and still took the championship lead.
Levi Kitchen, picked 2nd
actual: 5th · 14-2We said he needed two clean starts. He got one, and the round cost him the title.
Chance Hymas, picked 3rd
actual: 1st · 2-1"The most dangerous rider to the two in front of him." He won the round.
Ryder DiFrancesco, picked 4th
actual: 15th · 6-25Moto 2 went badly and there is no defending this one.
Carson Mumford, picked 5th
actual: 11th · 4-40Fourth in Moto 1, last in Moto 2. The call was reasonable and the result was not.
The rest of the card

Holeshot unverified, sleeper missed, Question 1 answered

Holeshot pick, Jorge Prado: not graded. We could not find a holeshot record for either Budds Creek 450 moto in the published results, and we are not going to score a pick we cannot check. Sleeper, Mark Fineis: miss. The test we set was whether he would improve on his Round 9 finish; he went from 14th at Unadilla to 22nd at Budds Creek on 19-36 scores. Key Question 1, "does Hunter Lawrence respond?": yes, emphatically. He won both motos, retook the points lead by one, and was champion by two a week later.

Round 9 · Unadilla · no preview published

Nothing to grade, and that is the finding

There is no Round 9 scorecard because no Round 9 preview was published. This page had been carrying the archived Round 2 (Hangtown) editorial since June 6, seven rounds during which the Saturday update did not run to completion. Grading ourselves against predictions we never made would be worse than admitting the gap, so: no picks, no hit rate, no credit.

Methodology

These are editorial calls, not statistical forecasts. Inputs are the completed 2026 Supercross and Pro Motocross seasons (from promotocross.com and supercrosslive.com, reconciled against the official points tables) and the SMX seeding rules in data/series.js. The live model at the top of this page is the statistical view and is generated separately; where the two disagree, they disagree in public.

Every prediction on this page gets graded in the scorecard section above after the round runs: how many of the predicted top five actually finished top five, whether the holeshot pick hit, and whether the sleeper improved on their previous round.