Outre que c’est le cas de 80% des pilotes du championnat, MXA nous rappelle assez judicieusement que ce genre de “choix stratégique” est loin d’être spécifiquement américain…
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“When Eli Tomac streaked away with the lead in the final round of the 2017 AMA Supercross Championship, it didn’t take him long to realize that while that was the winning strategy for the race—it was not the winning strategy for the Championship. Winning wouldn’t be enough, because no matter what he did up front, all master tactician Ryan Dungey had to do was follow him home (and as long as he was in the top four), the title would be his.
So, Eli Tomac did exactly what Lewis Hamilton did at the final Formula 1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi on November 27, 2016. Hamilton couldn’t win the F1 Championship by winning the race. He needed help, but not help from his AMG Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, but help from the Ferrari and Red Bull teams. Rosberg was the man that Hamilton was trying to beat — but since Lewis couldn’t shake Rosberg, he elected to slow down and jam Rosberg from behind with Sebastian Vettel and Max Versatppen. If Rosberg finished in the top three, he would be the 2016 F1 World Driving Champion. Hamilton had to figure out how to get Rosberg passed…twice.
The AMG Mercedes team manager told Lewis to pick up the pace, out of fear that Vettel and Verstappen would not just pass Rosberg, but Hamilton also. But, when they told him to go faster he replied something to the effect that if he didn’t win the Championship he didn’t care about winning the race. But, just like Tomac’s copy-cat strategy, it didn’t work for Hamilton either. Rosberg stuck his car behind Hamilton’s and didn’t leave any room for Vettel to make a move.
The problem with the “go slow strategy” is that if the guy you are blocking makes a move, you have to do something about it—something that is not very nice. Ryan Dungey will always be able to say that he respected Eli Tomac, and didn’t do anything untoward while racing with him. Now you might think there is nothing Ryan could have done, but you are forgetting how Michael Schumacher won the 1994 World Driving Championship. Schumacher was leading Damon Hill by one point going into the final round in Australia…and many people say that he torpedoed Hill’s car on purpose in the crash that damaged both of their cars. Schumacher didn’t earn any points that day, but neither did Damon Hill. So, Schumacher won the Championship by one point. At any point in the Las Vegas Supercross, Ryan Dungey could have center-punched Tomac, who was slowing dramatically in an effort to force Dungey to get in front of him, but Ryan didn’t do anything untoward. Tomac cannot say the same thing.
Even worse, Tomac’s last corner attempt to clean out Dungey, not only didn’t collect Dungey, but it allowed Husqvarna’s Jason Anderson to pass both of them for the win (and cost Tomac the 3-point difference between 1st and 2nd). Those 3 points mean that even if he had knocked Dungey down, Dungey could easily remounted and still gotten enough points to clinch the crown.”
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De même, l’avis de Matthes sur cette stratégie délibérée est comme toujours intéressant.
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“The main started innocently enough with Dungey getting into the lead and Tomac charging and catching him. Tomac made an aggressive pass into the lead and I suppose that was it. He didn’t knock Ryan down, got into the lead and this thing was over. Or was it?
But then as we all saw, Tomac slowed down to allow the chasing pack of Jason Anderson, Chad Reed, Blake Baggett and his Kawasaki teammate Josh Grant to catch up. Tomac was going to bunch the pack up and hope for a Dungey mistake. If he won, he needed Dungey to get fifth to win the title.
The crazy thing is this strategy almost worked! Reed and Grant were riding the best they had in weeks and definitely didn’t give one poop about Dungey’s title chase. Tomac slowed two more times and let Dungey by only to aggressively pass Dungey back each time! This is Ryan Dungey, an icon of the sport, one of the best ever and Tomac was treating him like a cat with a wounded mouse! Seemingly whenever Tomac needed to catch back up and pass, he was able to do that. The drama out there was at an all-time high!
In the end it didn’t work, Tomac needed allies out there and after Anderson punted Reed off the track there wasn’t anything he could do outside of T-boning Dungey off the bike. Anderson, Baggett, and Dean Wilson would rather light themselves on fire than get into the mix and hurt Dungey’s title chances. Eventually though, Tomac slowed so much on the last lap that Anderson snuck by for the win with Tomac second and Grant third. It was an eventful race and one that many will not soon forget.
As anyone that listened to our post-race podcast knows, I wasn’t a fan of Tomac’s strategy. Sure it worked out better than I thought, but he needed nine points and the biggest gap in the points system is from first to second. So win the race, get that locked down and hope for the improbable to happen. As it was he didn’t win the race and gained four points on Dungey, so one more than winning the race and Dungey getting second. The way Grant and Reed were riding though, who knows, maybe they get up into the mix. If it’s me, catch up to Dungey, make a hell of an aggressive pass on him, grab your 10th win (100K bonus and place in record books as most wins in a season without winning the title) and hope for the best behind you.
What Tomac did was legal and all his passes on Dungey were aggressive but IN NO WAY do I think they were dirty or “cheap shots” like Dungey referred to them after the race on the FS1 broadcast. He towed that line perfectly but as I said on the pod, if the third, fourth or maybe fifth run at Dungey actually succeeded and he went down, was Kawasaki and Tomac thinking that everyone at the FIM and KTM would just shrug their shoulders and award the trophy to Tomac?
You want to see a shit-storm of epic proportions, watch what would’ve happened if Dungey had gone down! So I’m ok with the “bunching” strategy but the aggressive passing, eh…. I don’t think in this 2017 supercross world where we’ve seen many fines and DQs, those pass attempts would’ve stood legally. Maybe I’m wrong but the predatory action by the #3 wasn’t something that I would think would work with the officials.
Again, though, the pass attempts were not dirty or malicious, they were not Josh Grant on Malcolm Stewart in East Rutherford or AJ “The Cat” Catanzaro on Dakota Tedder at the same race. But still, how does KTM just accept those pass attempts as part of the race and not file a protest?
Tomac and I spoke at the press conference and I liked what he had to say. “I never want to injure the person. At the same time, there’s a whole lot on the line. It’s the championship. It’s what we dream of as a kid. We were that close this year. That race, it was something else. It was a dream scenario for me to be in front and to be able to stack up the pack and control it and hopefully bunch up guys.”
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