While the temperatures may be a bit cooler outside the Metrodome, the action inside will be as hot as ever. 

Ricky Carmichael, 21, is on a historic roll coming into Saturday's race. The Team Chevy Trucks Kawasaki rider has won six AMA EA Sports Supercross races in a row, which places him on an elite list of only three other riders in the history of the series to manage that feat. Should Carmichael win in Minneapolis it will be seven in a row. Only Jeremy McGrath, the all-time wins leader in Supercross, has achieved that kind of supremacy. In 1996 McGrath won a record 13 consecutive Supercross races.

McGrath, 29, is finding his bid to win an eighth AMA Supercross championship slipping away. With a very un-McGrath-like sixth place finish in Daytona last week – his worst placing in three years – the Team Mazda Yamaha rider fell 26 points behind Carmichael in the championship. 

With first place paying 25 championship points, the current gap means that Carmichael could miss a race and still hold the series lead. 

McGrath, who won six of the seven AMA Supercross races held in the Metrodome, hopes to continue his success in Minneapolis and to start chipping away at Carmichael's lead.

Minnesota-area fans will have a local son to root for Saturday. Heath Voss, 23, is having a respectable year in the Supercross series. Voss, who rides for the Great Lakes Aviation Honda team, is 18th in the standings and is coming off a solid ninth-place finish in Daytona Beach last week. 

While Carmichael has a strong hold on the premier 250 Supercross, the 125 East Region is one of the most hotly contested in years. Nathan Ramsey, of the Yamaha of Troy team, leads the championship by a single point over Travis Pastrana and Mike Brown. 

Team Suzuki's Pastrana has won three of the four AMA 125 East Region races leading up to Minneapolis, but a crash at the second round at Georgia Dome in Atlanta has meant that the 17-year-old racing prodigy from Maryland has had to come from behind to catch Ramsey. A victory in the Metrodome for Pastrana would give him the series lead. 

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