If you had to rate the top 25 riders on the Amp’d Mobile SX tour so far in 2007, who would you vote first? Okay, not a lot of debate there. What about second—the part-time RC or the #22 of Chad Reed? And where would you put Ryan Villopoto or even Jason Lawrence if everyone were to line up together this weekend? 
 

James Stewart topped the first Racer X Top 25 Power Rankings

That’s the kind of bench-racing we had in mind when we came up with the idea for the new Racer X Top 25 Power Rankings. For this brand new weekly feature, we invited a diverse panel of industry friends and race watchers to rank the best 25 riders so far in 2007, based on results, lap times, effort and more; it’s like asking where they think the riders might finish if they all lined up together—450s and 250Fs—for an all-inclusive race (and we only included the West Region SX riders as we haven’t seen the East guys yet; they will be added to the ballot after Atlanta).

The Racer X Top 25 Power Rankings work much the way the USA Today/AP college football Top 25 poll works: The rider voted first gets 25 points; 24 for second; 23 for third… Down to one point for a 25th ranking. Then we added the ballots up for our top 25. (We also listed all of the voters below, in alphabetical order; we will be adding more for next week.)
 So who’s #2? Check it out:

 POINTS   #    RIDER    TEAM
1. 945    7      James Stewart (33) Monster Energy Kawasaki
2. 872    4      Ricky Carmichael (5) Makita Suzuki
3. 861   22     Chad Reed San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Yamaha
4. 841    51    Ryan Villopoto Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki
5. 790    15    Tim Ferry Monster Energy Kawasaki
6. 650    27    Nicholas Wey MDK Motorsports Honda
7. 647    11    Travis Preston Sobe No Fear/Samsung Mobile Honda
8. 637    14    Kevin Windham Sobe No Fear/Samsung Mobile Honda
9. 622    338  Jason Lawrence Yamaha of Troy Yamaha
10. 556   26   Michael Byrne Rockstar Suzuki
11. 553   12   David Vuillemin MDK Motorsports Honda
12. 513    9     Ivan Tedesco Makita Suzuki
13. 509   24   Josh Grant Sobe No Fear/Samsung Mobile Honda
14. 413  377  Christophe Pourcel Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki
15. 358   13   Heath Voss Privateer Honda
16. 335   58   Joshua Hill Factory Yamaha
17. 280   73   Jake Weimer Sobe No Fear/Samsung Mobile Honda
18. 274  102  Christopher Gosselaar Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki
19. 255   37   Paul Carpenter Cernic's Kawasaki
20. 181  577  Martin Davalos Red Bull KTM
21. 165   40   Jeff Gibson Cernic's Kawasaki
22. 151 100   Josh Hansen Red Bull KTM
23. 138    8    Grant Langston Factory Yamaha
24. 131 630   Matthew Lemoine Lucas Oil/Star Racing Yamaha
25. 107   53   Tyler Evans Rockstar Bloodshot Suzuki

Total number of judges voting this week: 38

Josh Hill is 16th

JUDGES
(Linda Ardehali, Vince Arimitsu, John Ayers, Chris Bond, Jason Berry, Dr. John Bodnar, Andy Bowyer, Paul Buckley, Dave Castillo, Davey Coombs, David Clabaugh, Tim Cotter, Steve Cox, Simon Cudby, Jeff Emig, Mike Farber, Jason Fleming, Ryan Gauld, Jason Hooper, Frank Hoppen, Steven Hudson, Chris Hultner, David Izer, Eric Johnson, Jim Kimball, Scotty LaLonde, Stephen Legrand, Mario Marini, Nick McCabe, David Pingree, Dave Prater, Pat Schutte, Bryan Stealey, Denny Stephenson, Michael Stusiak, Carl Stone, Jean Turner, Billy Ursic, Scott Wallenberg, Matt Ware, Jason Weigandt, Billy Wood)

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