WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 52 ISSUE 4 JANUARY 27, 2015 P43
The win was Canard's first
of the season, and it certainly
added his name to the mix of
hopefuls in the running for the
2015 title, especially after Ken
Roczen, who came into the
race with a seemingly comfort-
able lead in the championship,
crashed out of contention
on the same lap that Canard
passed Reed. The incident left
Roczen scrambling to finish 15th
and dropped the Soaring Eagle/
Jimmy Johns/RCH Suzuki rider
to second in the standings.
Adding in his first-place
points, Canard moves to third in
the standings, 10 points behind
Roczen and 14 behind new
leader Ryan Dungey, who took
runner-up honors.
"It was a little rough there
towards the end," Canard said.
"I made a bunch of mistakes,
but I'm so grateful I could make
it happen. Last week was not
much fun with all the drama. I
was glad that Chad and I were
able to get on the podium;
I'm just so happy with the way
things went tonight."
The hordes of Honda rep-
Briefly...
practice bike that I'm riding at home;
I'm comfortable, I'm happy, and
come to the races on the race bike
and suddenly it's not doing things.
It's locking and doing all these weird
things. I was kind of chasing it, kind
of going one way, going the other
way. One minute I would feel like it
was soft, then it was stiff. Finally we
had some video from Phoenix and
we slow-mo'ed it and it triggered the
guys in a direction and they found
some parts that unfortunately weren't
correct. Last weekend I was at least
a little better. I was fighting for a top
five and what happened happened.
Then obviously this weekend I came
here just like last weekend, deter-
mined to try to get on the podium. It's
a good feeling to be on the podium
for sure."
Reed admitted that he was surprised
by his slow start to the season. "To
show up and go 10-10 was an eye-
opener to be honest," said Reed.
"I was scratching my head asking
myself what went wrong. Did I over
train? Did I under-train? What hap-
pened? For me, I was disappointed
in myself that I wasn't able to pinpoint
the problem, but then again I don't
open things, I didn't see the inside of
the forks. I hope to be a podium guy.
This week I just said to myself that I'm
going to race for podiums, I'm going
to race for race wins and if it's meant
to be it'll come back around. A huge
step in that side of things is [Roczen]
not having a good night. The pace is
really high. The tracks are tough. So
I think starts and some experience
and having good pace could help
me out."
After the race, Cooper Webb
seemed genuinely pleased to see
[John] Gallagher [the FIM
Race Director who made
the decision to black flag
Reed for his retaliation
on Canard] topped us all.
"Like I said, just trying
to move on from that,
leave it up to my friends
that I hired and we'll see
what happens."
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