Reed muscles his way to a second title…
Published: 05th May 2008
Author: Pondo
Chad Reed won his second Supercross crown with an awesome performance at Las Vegas on Saturday.
The San Manual Yamaha rider went into the final round with a comfortable points lead over Kevin Windham, but refused to tip-toe to the title - instead, after an average start left him seventh, the Australian came roaring through the pack past the collective strength of Team Honda to find himself on Windham’s tail with seven laps to go. The title would have been his easy enough if he just rode to second, but the Thunder from Down Under put it all on the line and blitzed his way past K-Dub for an emphatic win, ahead of Windham and Short - a brilliant, brave ride, and a great way to crown what has been an up-and-down season for the 2004 champion.
In the Lites class, it was the big shoot-out, East Coast versus West Coast - Ryan Villopoto got the holeshot and started to gap the field, and it seemed that the most dominant 250f rider of the last couple of years was on his way to a consolation victory after he missed out on the East Coast crown to Trey Canard. But no-one had told Ryan Dungey that Villopotato was unbeatable… Dungey, also a championship runner-up this year, pulled the trigger and simply ran Villopoto down, making a move as the flustered former champion tangled with a lapper on the last lap, and running out Shoot Out winner for the second year in a row. A disappointed ’Poto finished second, ahead of Trey Canard in a distant third - West Coast champion Jason Lawrence had a very quiet night, gating sixth and slowly working the wrong way down the field before casing a triple and bursting his fairly-large mouth.
Closer to home, Billy Mac and Swordy were in imperious form at Lyng - the Scottish duo took a clean sweep of pole, both race wins and fastest laps in both motos in their respective MX1 and MX2 classes. Mackenzie made it look so easy, holeshotting both races and just motored serenely away into the distance, doing a reasonable impression of a man on a training day whilst everyone else was battling flat-out. Second overall behind Billy Mac was Brad Anderson, the Swift Suzuki pilot logging second and third place finishes on his comeback from a shoulder injury - the normally-fiesty North-Easterner had pace, but a lack of race sharpness saw him slow in the second half of moto two. There to take advantage of his fade was James Noble, who staged a terrific fight back to fifth in moto one after getting tangled in someone else’s incident - moto two saw him gate inside the top ten, and the Yorkshireman just put his head down and charged through to second for third overall on the day. Mark Jones took third in the opener, but a high-speed crash just over halfway through the second rang the Welshman’s bell and bent his KXF out of a usable shape - Tom Church was also struck by misfortune, taking fourth in moto one but suffering a mechanical DNF in race two.
MX2 looked like it would shape up to be a two-horse race after Swordy and his Championship rival Shaun Simpson were just a third of a second apart after qualifying. But when the gate dropped, Sword fired his Molson Kawasaki out alongside the fast-starting Carl Nunn whilst Simpson was down around sixth, and when Nunn fell early on lap one, the way was clear for Swordy to check out - Simpson made short work of getting into second, but by then Sword was gone. Behind them, Jason Dougan settled in for a lonely ride to third, whilst Elliot Banks-Browne, on the back of two excellent points-scoring rides in Portugal the week before, was running a comfortable fourth - with the two lap board out, however, his Swift Suzuki went bang and locked up. In moto two, Simpson got his KTM UK 250f out ahead of Sword, but the number 7 was right on his tail - four laps in, Simpson made a mistake and Sword made his mover, taking the lead and edging away as Simpson, son of former Scottish GP rider Willie, tried to mount a fight back. But no-one was going to beat Swordy today… Behind them, Carl Nunn made up for his first moto off by engaging in a battle of wills with Banks-Browne - with four laps left, EB-B made a mistake and Nunny was through and away for third. Lewis Gregory would take an excellent debut podium as he continues his recovery from injury, but the man of the match award has to go to Martin Barr - just two weeks after breaking his collarbone in Spain, the Irishman rode two motos of steely determination for sixth overall.