Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

THQ World Supercross GP/AMA Supercross Series Round 12/1 1 : Edward .Jones DOlTle Chad Reed got his fourth Supercross GP victory of the year In St. Louis after a hard early battle with Ricky Carmichael. It was also his third AMA Supercross win of the year, and of his By HENNY RAY ABRAMS PHOTOS BY STEVE BRUHN ST. LOmS, MO, MAR. 22 . , his could have been the race everyone's been waiting all season to see. The one where the two best riders battled head to head, bar to bar, for 20 laps, neither giving an inch, both showing why they deserve the number-one plate. It could have been that race. But it wasn't. Instead, it turned into a showcase for Yamaha's Chad Reed, the Australian celebrating his recent 21st birthday with a romp to the flag after Honda's Ricky Carmichael crashed on the sixth lap while battling Reed for the lead. By then, the lead had changed hands six times or more. Afterward, it was Reed breezing to his third win of the season, this one in front of a crowd of 46,472 in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri, round 11 of the AMA Supercross Series and the 12th round of the THQ World Supercross GP. "He made us all look stupid at Daytona," Reed said of Carmichael's win in the previous round of the AMA Supercross Series, his fourth in a row. "After that race, I went home and tried some new things. It seemed to have worked this weekend. The championship is a lot of points. I am not taking anything away from Ernie [Fonseca], but I don't think there is anyone else that can beat the two of us." Carmichael finished second, 6.266 seconds behind, with teammate Ernesto Fonseca taking his first podium of a difficult year in third. "I just made a mistake," a stonefaced Carmichael said in the postrace press conference. "I would have loved to race [Chad] the whole 20 laps. I am just fed up with myself. I am too old to be making stupid mistakes like that. I am not going to tell you that was the greatest race of my life. It was a fun race until I went down. I am confident with my program; it's just frustrating. For me to make a mistake like that and not even give myself a chance is what the frustrating thing is." The win allowed Reed, who celebrated his 21st birthday a week earlier, to take back a few championship points. With five rounds remaining, Carmichael leads the AMA title hunt 257 to 235. Reed continues to hold on to the top spot in the GP points chart, lead- S APRIL 2, 2003' cue I • career. ing sidelined teammate David Vuillemin 276 to 238. Yamaha's Tim Ferry, who is also out indefinitely with the Epstein-Barr virus, is third with 216 points. Reed passed SoBe Suzuki's Danny Smith early on the first lap after Smith left with the holeshot, and Carmichael went with him, the two soon to get away, with Carmichael n _ .... s flying into the lead over a set of triples late on the second lap. On the next lap, Reed went under Carmichael in a berm to take back the lead, with Carmichael striking back on the fourth lap when both bobbled. Carmichael recovered more quickly and was out front again. Then it was Reed again, flying by Carmichael over the finish jump. "I wanted to get a good start coming into the race and just race the track," Reed said. "I went into the lead straight away, and Ricky [Carmichael] was right on me. My bike is really good in the whoops. I thought that is where the race would be won or lost. I passed him once there, and he passed me back." After winning the faster of the two heat races, Carmichael admitted that the whoops had been troublesome. "The whoops were definitely tough for me until the main event," he said. "When the main event rolled around, I felt great through them. We made some adjustments, and it was 10 times better. It made it a little easier to keep the pace. The whoops were really tough. They were steep and kind of cupped out." With Reed in the lead on lap five, Carmichael again made his move, this time in a six-jump sequence on the narrow north end of the track, a grouping Carmichael was handling double, triple, single. This time, Carmichael found Reed in his landing zone and had to move to the right, landing on a haybale and tumbling off the track onto the pavement. "Chad [Reed] and I were battling it, and I had been doing that section and he hadn't, so I was kind of uncomfortable," he said of the fall, which dropped him three spots to fifth. "He made a couple of mistakes through there. I just wasn't confident in that section when I was behind him. I wasn't sure if he was going to jump it, so I jumped it at the last second, and I can't remember if he did or didn't, but I knew I was going to be too close, so I went to the right so I wouldn't land on him. I ran off the racetrack, so that was about it. The main thing is, I didn't .want to hit the guy, so I went to the right, and there was no room. That was it. The rest was history. He was out front, and I was in second." "It seems like every time [we race], one of us crashes," Reed said. From then on it was Reed alone. His lead over Danny Smith, who took over second, was seven seconds ending the sixth lap, and it would increase to over 10. Carmichael

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