Reed bludgeons his way to San Diego glory…
Published: 11th February 2008
Author: Pondo
The Thunder from Down Under wins again to complete his sweep of every Californian race, but from week to week, it‘s getting closer…
Reed took his San Manuel Yamaha out of the gate second behind the holeshotting Davi Millsaps and wasted no time putting a move in for the lead, but Red Bull Honda’s Millsaps bounced right back and retook the lead straight away. Reedy took a small while to recover from the opening shenanigans and waited until lap three before making another pass and starting to move away, but the young Floridian did a decent job of keeping Reed honest, hovering a few seconds back. Arguably the ride of the night came from Tim Ferry - another Florida resident, Red Dog came round fifth at the end of lap one and punched hard all the way through the race, bringing his Monster Energy Kawasaki up to challenge for third by the halfway mark. On lap twelve, Reed chose to inject some excitement into the race when he lost the rear of the bike in the sand section and went down - Millsaps seized his chance to retake the lead and Ferry leapt right on to Reed’s tail. But Chad kept calm, taking a couple of laps to regroup before beginning his irresistible charge back to the front of the pack, and this time Ferry hooked a ride and went with him - Reedy took the lead back from Millsaps with a couple of laps left, with Ferry still there and still working hard. It took until the last lap, but Red Dog finally managed to put a pass on Millsaps for second in the same place that Reed passed Davi for the win, capping a fine run for the red-headed Floridian. Millsaps had pace to give Reed pause for thought, but should be happy with a podium after his gastric afflictions of recent times.
In the Lites class, the battle between championship leader Ryan Dungey and challenger Jason Lawrence took another significant swing - Makita Suzuki’s Dungey has been suffering a torrid time of late, with San Diego proving to be no exception. Lawrence took a spectacular holeshot by railing the outside of turn one, whilst Dungey got mired back in seventh. Fighting back, Suzuki’s great hope went down early on in a battle with Bobby Kiniry, losing his helmet visor but remounting and beginning a second charge. As J-Law eked out a lead he was to hold all the way to the chequered flag, Dungey made his way back up the field but crashed twice more - it’s to his credit that he carried on regardless and finished sixth, with Austin Stroupe right on his tail. Two rounds left in the West Coast Lites series, and Dungey has gone from a cushion of almost a whole race to being two points in arrears to Lawrence - either way, it’s not over yet…
On the subject of “it’s not over yet”, Travis Pastrana made an appearance at the Supercross on Saturday - the legend himself did a hot lap of the track for the fans, throwing dual nac-nacs with Chad Reed, before completing a sweet backflip over the finish line tabletop on an RMZ450. With luck, one of the most talented men ever to ride a motorcycle will compete again in March, with a one-off return to the GNCC series opener in Florida. Pastrana and Knighter have raced before, albeit briefly - it’ll be interesting to see what happens if The Prospect can pose a race-long challenge.
All the other news appears to be injury-based, at the minute - Mike Alessi went down hard in second practice at San Diego, suffering what is believed to be a broken collarbone. Yamaha took a double whammy when Broc Hepler and Grant Langston signed off - Hepler has a broken thumb, whilst Langston (ever the dramatist…) has what seems to be leaking blood vessels behind his left eye, causing blurred vision. The reigning AMA motocross champion is currently expected to be out for four weeks. In other injury-related news, it’s rumoured that Honda’s Ben Townley will be temporarily replaced by French Supercross star Benjamin Coisy for the duration of the Lites East Coast series.