Coming off two straight wins, Eli Tomac of Cortez finished 13th after going down Saturday in a duel with Justin Barcia in the AMA Monster Energy 450 Supercross in Oakland.
Tomac lined up in the No. 3 spot at the gate, and after a slow start, was in seventh place for the first two laps. He had dropped to eighth in the fourth lap, when Barcia made a tight inside pass and Tomac went down.
Tomac dropped to 20th place through the eighth lap. He climbed back to 15th by Lap 17 and finished 13th in the 24-lap race.
Barcia later posted on Instagram that he thought it was clean pass.
“He wasn’t ready for me to come in and turned down. I would do the same thing over again. I held my line and was on the inside.”
Saturday’s main event at the Oakland coliseum was marked by multiple crashes and a tense back-and-forth battle between Ken Roczen of Honda and Jason Anderson of Husqvarna.
Cole Seeley won the holeshot, followed by Roczen, Marvin Musquin, Blake Baggett, Weston Peick, Anderson and Tomac. Seeley held the lead through the first 11 laps until going down in the 12th and giving Roczen the lead for the next 12 laps.
Meanwhile, Anderson knocked down Musquin while passing him in the 12th, and with Seeley down, moved into second to challenge Roczen. After back-and-forth passes, Anderson got by Roczen a final time, with half a lap to go in the race.
Other crashes included Justin Brayton of Honda, Tyler Bowers of Kawasaki, Kyle Cunningham of Suzuki, Weston Peick of Suzuki, and Tomac’s teammate on Kawasaki, Josh Grant.
Anderson now leads the series standings with 115 points. Roczen moved into second place overall, with 100 points. After finishing fifth on Saturday, Barcia fell to third place with 98 points.
Tomac dropped two spots in the standings, to 12th place, and has 63 points this season. He’s now 52 points off series-leading, Anderson, or an average of 4.333 points per round. In an up-and-down start to the season, Tomac crashed out of his first race, did not start the second, won the next two, then finished 13th.
Tomac looked strong going into the main event.
He placed second in his heat, 1.560 seconds behind Seely. He broke into third position after the first turn, behind Seely and Musquin and ahead of teammate Grant. He jammed his way past Musquin after exiting the whoops in the fourth of eight laps, but was unable to catch Seely. Tomac posted the fastest lap in the heat, at 51.042 seconds.
Barcia won the second heat, leading Cooper Webb by 4.266 seconds. Barcia’s fast lap of 52.394 was more than a second behind Tomac’s fastest lap.
During qualifying rounds on Saturday, Tomac was in eighth place after posting a fastest lap of 54.053 seconds in the first round, and 52.690 seconds in the second. Barcia set the pace in qualifying rounds with fastest laps of 53.038 and 51.798 seconds. Between Barcia and Tomac were Musquin, Anderson, Seeley, Webb, Grant and Bowers.
The Supercross series next goes to San Diego on Feb. 10, then to Arlington, Texas, on Feb. 17 before heading east to Tampa, Atlanta and Daytona.
