Published on 16 February 2017

250 East Coast supercross preview

This Saturday night sees the start of the East coast 250 supercross championship and there are some heavy hitters lining up on the gate!

Pro Circuit Kawasaki have Joey Savatgy who pushed Cooper Webb all the way last year and will go down as one of the favourites and of course the charismatic Adam Cianciarulo. Savatgy is tough and resilient, he has also now been through a title challenging season. He will think this is his year but his friend and teammate might give him the most competition!

Cianciarulo was of course the championship leader when he was just 16 in his debut season but injuries have prevented the very confident youngster from racing he last two seasons. Now he is back and much taller!

Cianciarulo will have tougher competition this year than he did when he was racing Blake Baggett and Martin Davalos in his rookie year, and his height might prevent him from getting all the holeshots that he did that season too. But Cianciarulo has some great supercross skills and this might just be the year he fulfils that potential and gets a title.

Christian Craig has all the talent in the world as he showed last season in his comeback to the sport. Now, one year on and working with David Vuillemin, Craig should be even better than last season. Craig has all the technical skills to get the job done but does he have the self-belief to execute? Time will tell.

The you have the enigmatic Frenchman, Dylan Ferrandis, who could really set the cat amongst the pigeons. Ferrandis fears no-one and has shown, outdoors at least, that he can run with the best but supercross in America is a different ball game. Ferrandis should have the speed but as we have seen before, riding supercross and racing it are two different things. The biggest thing for Dylan, just like it was in MX2 GPs, will be staying healthy, if he can do that he might be a dark horse for this title provided he stays in contention during first couple of rounds as he gets his feet wet.

Zach Osborne will fly the flag for Husqvarna and he has the experience and speed to challenge. He might now win every race but Zach is usually in podium contention every week, but like Ferrandis and Cianciarulo needs to stay healthy.

Other contenders could be Alex Martin on the TLD KTM team and their new recruit Jordon Smith, plus Geico Honda man RJ Hampshire who is very fast on his day, Colt Nicholls is a very good supercross rider too, Benny Bloss could also do well! Usually the West is the strongest coast but this year the East might just be the toughest to get a title on!

And this might just be the perfect platform for Adam Cianciarulo to live up to the hype and get his first title!

Pic: PC Kawi