At what point do Chad Reed’s wins at an advanced age become so expected that we aren’t shocked anymore? Does each one of these victories seem crazier than the other, or less so? Will he win at age 40 and we’ll all just shrug our shoulders and say, “Ho hum, that’s what Reed does” instead of “I CAN’T BELIEVE A 40-YEAR-OLD WON!” That’s kind of where we are after Atlanta 1, where Reed, who will turn 33 in a few weeks, once again temporarily became the best supercross rider in the world, at least for one night. Considering Reed had produced just one podium finish through the first seven races in Monster Energy AMA Supercross an FIM World Championship, this one could or should have been a surprise. But you should never be truly surprised when the Discount Tire/TwoTwo Motorsports rider does something surprising—and you should never, ever, ever count him out.
Chad won this race in two ways: he was both the veteran opportunist, and also an out-and-out speed merchant when needed. The first few laps, he used his experience to stick to the inside of a very tricky first turn—he said he got off the gas way, way earlier than usual—and get way with the lead. The riders who had won races this year, Ryan Dungey, Trey Canard, Ken Roczen and Eli Tomac were a few spots back, and Reed sprinted away from the field. Eventually Ryan Dungey got to second and made a real run at Reed. Yeah, Dungey is the points leader and his title rivals like Roczen and Tomac had then gone down, but he wasn’t thinking about that—he didn’t even know. Dungey was just going after Reed with everything he had, and he got it down to about a second, and Reed wicked it back up on the last three laps and got away. The beginning of the race was all Reed’s experience in taking advantage of the situation he was given. At the end, he out-sprinted Dungey to the finish. Hey, at one point Chad even busted out the big quad out of the whoops, which no one else did in the main. He was going for it!
Dungey rode very well again and now has a full race lead in the standings since Roczen crashed back to 18th. He doesn’t care about the points at the moment, he’s just trying to win. “You can’t be thinking about Vegas, you have to be in the moment and think about Atlanta when you’re there,” the Red Bull KTM rider told us. “Chad was getting a really good run through the whoops, they were really cupped out. I would make some time up the rest of the way around but I couldn’t quite get him.”
Canard was back to the troubles he had at the beginning of the season—he got a terrible start. Through practice, the heats and the main, he might have been the fastest rider of all, but we counted him in 11th on the first lap. Man did he come back, even getting Dungey in sight a bunch of times, getting within a second on the final lap. That’s all he could do though, and took third on his Team Honda HRC machine. His teammate Cole Seely was a solid fourth.
Weston Peick—dude’s a beast. He keeps going in and out of the series with injury but as always he doesn’t care, Weston was fast in practice, fast in his heat, and started second in the main. He kept Reed in sight for awhile, then Dungey got him, and then his overall lack of fitness due to having so many weeks off caught up to him. He said his knee got sore, too, as he tore his MCL last week in a first-turn crash. No matter, Peick just finished fifth anyway.
Really rough night for Soaring Eagle/Jimmy John’s RCH Suzuki’s Ken Roczen. He took a huge digger in practice trying to seat bounce the quad out of the whoops. He came up way short and bounced off the track and into the wall on the side. Ouch! He toughed it out and raced, but a bad start in the main event preceded a huge crash that nearly knocked him from the race. After a few laps cruising around, he picked up the pace, but the damage was done and Kenny took a lowly 18th. Canard takes over second in points, 25 down on Dungey, but six ahead of Roczen.
Forever linked, it seems, at about the same moment Roczen was down, Tomac went down as well, and his bike was so bent that he had to stop in the mechanic’s area for repairs. "I'm fine, just really frustrated because I was fast all day," Tomac said. "I just made a mistake out there in that slick part of the track and lost the front end. It was slicker than it normally is and I just got caught.” He got back into the race but finished 20th.
Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Davi Millsaps has just no luck at all. He crashed hard in practice and jacked him back, then got collected in a first turn crash in his heat. He fought back to make the main but was just putting in his laps. “I hurt my back worse than I’ve ever hurt it in my life,” he told us. “I can’t catch a break.”
The 250 race was as good as it gets—it was just awesome! Jeremy Martin took his Yamalube/Star Racing Yamaha to victory, and he earned every bit of it by passing his way through. Martin was amazing, much, much better than last weekend. Afterwards, he admitted he was really nervous last weekend because of that strange curse of not even qualifying in Dallas the past two years. “Everyone has their demons they have to get out,” he joked. Now that he’s relaxed, he’s riding much better, and passing Justin Bogle, Martin Davalos and Marvin Musquin to get the win is strong.
Davalos led the first half of the race on his Rockstar Energy Racing Husqvarna, but he made three huge mistakes in one lap and Bogle on a GEICO Honda, Martin and Musquin went by. By then, Musquin had already missed a triple, letting Martin go through. Martin pulled the trigger in the whoops on Bogle to get the lead with three laps to go. It was impressive.
Musquin got Bogle late for second. “During the race, I was thinking “Man this must be a great race for the crowd,”’ the Red Bull KTM rider told us, once again proving he’s the nicest guy in the world. “I made too many mistakes though and Martin rode good.”
Bogle feels like he let one get away. "I started tightening up, not breathing right for about three laps there for some reason,” he said. “It’s all good, we’re way better than we were last year at this time and right in there with those guys.”
How’s the double Atlanta weekend going to go? The crowd tonight was good but not as good as usual here, with just over 51,000 announced. The weather was exceptionally bad this week, though, in an area not used to it. Let’s see how it goes next weekend.
