It was a puzzling night for Chad Reed last Saturday in Sydney, Australia. He was able to race the Aus-X Open this time after having to watch from the sidelines last year with an ankle injury, but he ended up fifth overall on his Autotrader.com/JGR Yoshimura Suzuki. Most strange of all is that Reed won the final of three Triple Crown races, but only because he took the Shannon's Shortcut lane twice (it's like the Joker Lane at Monster Energy Cup, except actually shorter than the regular race line). Riders are supposed to take the shortcut once, Reed took it twice and crossed the checkered flag first. He was then penalized back to fifth.
"Honestly, in the last race I kind of have to laugh, because what else do I do?" he said to MotoOnline.com.au. "I never even knew that you weren’t allowed to take the joker lane more than once and, truthfully, because of my crash in the first one nobody was around me and I didn’t have to take it. Otherwise I would have taken it three times [laughs]! So, you know, I mean it was only two or three weeks ago I did Monster Cup. At that race the whole time you’re thinking ‘don’t forget the joker lane, don’t forget the joker lane’ because typically their joker lane is longer. Here, you self-penalise yourself if you don’t take it, but in the Vegas they obviously penalise you if you don’t take it – I think the same penalty, around five places or something like that. That thought process and whatever, me not hearing or knowing, I wasn’t aware of the rule. A little bit of a rookie move there."
You can read all of Chad's post-race thoughts here via MotoOnline.com.au.
