Cycle News - January 17, 2012

SUPERCROSS ROUND 2/JANUARY 14, 2012 CHASE FIELD/PHOENIX, ARIZONA

Chad Reed: “I just didn’t ride good.”

After taking an impressive runner-up finish at the
opener in Anaheim, Chad Reed put a positive spin
on his fifth-place finish in Phoenix. “It was not the
result we were looking for, and it’s not how I wanted
to race 20 laps, but for the most part it was a positive
weekend. It was kind of one those nights that was
neither good nor bad. The result was worse than last
week, but the feeling within the team is good and the
things that we wanted to be better at we were, and we
learned a lot as far as with the bike and some of the
changes we made during the week.”
When pressed, however, Reed admitted that he
didn’t ride as well as he had hoped to. “I just didn’t
ride good and I kind of struggled on the start,” Reed
confessed. “I don’t want to say it’s a stacked class,
but they race very differently up front than they do
farther back. From fifth back, they race a lot different
than I’m used to and that’s not a negative thing on
those guys, but I need to continue to get good starts
like I did last week, so I can put myself in good posi-
tions to not have to deal with that.”
Reed was among many of the riders who had good
things to say about the Phoenix course.

“I was one of the guys who was critical about the Anaheim track,” said Reed. “And this week things were much improved. For Phoenix, they did a great job with watering and with track maintenance, so it was one of the better Phoenix racetracks that I’ve raced.”