Team Monster Energy/360fly/Chaparral Yamaha’s Chad Reed has had a bit of a strange 2016. Almost left without a ride when the silly season music stopped, the veteran was able to work something out with the brand of his choice and he went blue again. It’s been an up and down season for the 22 but fitting that career 450SX start #1 was on a Yamaha and this past weekend in Indianapolis marked his 200th. Third all-time in the career starts category, Reed made it sound like after the race he was going for at least another 28, which would put him atop the all-time SX start list, ahead of Mike LaRocco’s record 227.
Racer X: Two-hundred career starts. The first one was Anaheim 2002. You pushed my guy Nick Wey out of a qualifying spot, and I’m like, this Lites guy beat him. And here you are 199 ones later.
Chad Reed: Crazy to think. Two-hundred flew by pretty fast. It’s kind of sad how fast they went, I guess. I would truthfully say that I feel more appreciative and I’m enjoying it more now. But with that said, I always still have frustrations. I’m as competitive as I was back then. I want to be a podium guy and I’m just not putting myself in good positions, not getting good starts. Then tonight we just had an issue and really struggled the last five laps.
I was going to ask you if you made a mistake because you were kind of closing on [Josh] Grant for fourth and then lost as bunch of time.
I was a fourth place guy tonight I think. But just the last five laps I couldn’t fight. Pretty much just had to ride around. It’s an issue we’re going to have to work on because we had it last week. It wasn’t as bad. It was maybe like the last two laps, and then this week it was the last five.
It’s probably a clutch problem. That’s my mechanic ways coming back in. What else fades as the race goes on? A clutch. You got to stop being so hard on them.
I think everybody was hard on them tonight. Our Yamaha teammates across here [JGR], I watched them change clutches and they looked like they were quite toasty. I watched the semi. [Ryan] Dungey was pretty hard on his clutch I could see.
Partly the dirt, right?
Yeah. The last two races have been rutty. I think last week the pace was slower because how rutty it was, so tonight I think it was a lot more racy, so I think you’re harder on it. But it’s a problem we have to fix.
When you look back on 200 career starts, a couple titles in there—RC [Ricky Carmichael] years or the JS [James Stewart] years, what do you remember most for intensity?
The Ricky years were more fun because I think we had better equipment. 2003, it was my rookie year. The bike was really good. I felt like I was good. 2004 I won obviously but Ricky wasn’t there. 2005 very frustrating in the fact that I felt like I had everything but then we just really struggled with the aluminum frame. I just couldn’t do the things that I was normally able to do.
But they [Yamaha] told us it was the exact same characteristics as the steel frame!
I remember they brought out my championship bike the year before and we did a comparison. Right away it was so much better on the ‘04 and then they pretty much put that ‘04 bike in the box van and sent it off to the museum. Looking back, I think it would have been nice to sit down as a team and go, “Okay, we can’t race this bike. You don’t have that option. But let’s try to use it as a tool to make the ‘05 better.” I think that would have been better for us, but they just took it away and then that was it. You knew it was better but you lost track. There was a feeling that you were chasing but you didn’t really have anything to go back to back with. Any time we had traction I was okay. The muddy races and things like that, but any time it was hard pack I just couldn’t make it work. So ‘06, same thing, struggled. 2007 probably the worst year. I would say ’07 would be James’ best year ever. That Kawi combination with James—unbelievable. I would say that was the best, gnarliest James Stewart that I’ve ever raced, ’07.
From what I’ve heard, he said the bike [’07 Kawasaki] was terrible. [But] It was unbelievable how strong he was and the things he could do on a motorcycle was just for sure next level. All these great things we say about James I think is really based on that year. I remember just something that stands out, Vegas when he did the whoops there was a wall jump and he just straight hit the wall jump and jumped all the rest of the whoops. Things like that. Then obviously ’08 we made big changes and I won the title. 2009 was good. But it’s been up and down. I felt like the timing is everything in a career and sometimes the timing was on my side, sometimes the timing was against me. That’s part of life.
We always talk about how James or Ricky would beat you by ten or fifteen seconds in a main event, and you would be like, “Yeah, I’m going to make some changes and come back.” And you would never get mentally defeated. The next week you’d win! That’s tough in the sport when everyone kind of accepts a pecking order. I think that’s been your strongest thing is you just never accept, no matter how bad those guys beat you, that you weren’t as good as them.
Yeah, 200 races in and honestly it is no different. I don’t leave here thinking those guys are so gnarly. They’re not gnarly. They’re just not. They’re guys that are preparing well, confident in their equipment. And not that I’m not, that’s not what I’m saying. We’ve come a long way from where we started. But I think in my opinion we need this off-season to really tackle some of our issues to allow me to be a better rider. Some of it’s me, some of it’s not. So I think it’s just trying to make everything better and everything like that, I know that we show up on a weekend and if we hit what we need to hit I can challenge for a win. And that’s what keeps me around. That’s what makes me excited to be negotiating a two-year extension. I’m excited for the next at least 27 so I can beat LaRocco [the all-time record for supercross starts].