Cycle News

P108 BY STEVE COX CN III EMPIRE OF DIRT A fter Chad Reed announced he was shutting down his TwoTwo Motorsports race team last June, speculation began immediately, as you'd expect. Publicly, Reed had stated that in order to be truly competi- tive and race for championships, he needed to stop trying to be all things to all people; he didn't feel he could continue being a team owner, handling all of the things that go along with it, and put enough energy into his own racing in order to be successful at that. And, ultimately, Reed is still a competitor and he believes that, even at 33 years of age, he can and should be able to compete for Supercross championships. Reed isn't crazy. Lest anyone forget, he won a 450cc main event this season in Atlanta, and in that main event he set the fastest lap time and kept eventual champion Ryan Dungey at bay for 12 laps. Reed is still very much capable of winning Supercross races and champion- ships, even at what is considered an advanced age for this sport. Well, I've been wondering a few things, often aloud, for years now in regard to Yamaha and Chad Reed, and here's as much of it as I can recall: The official "Team Yamaha" shut down following the 2009 AMA MX and SX racing season. At the time, Yamaha was supporting both the L&M Yamaha team (with James Stew- art as its primary rider) and the JGR Yamaha team with factory equipment, with L&M being a "Supercross-only" operation. With those teams fielding 450s for Big Blue, and with the Star Racing team doing the deed in the 250cc class (and with financial considerations likely playing a pretty big role as well, with the economy having taken such a massive dive in 2008) the decision was made to pull the plug on the direct factory effort. However, personnel has stayed in place since then, just with different roles. Team Ya- maha's former manager Jim Perry is still at the races quite often in a supporting role, as are Dan Rambert and Keith McCarty, among oth- ers. I've asked Perry and McCarty on multiple occasions something along the lines of, "So, when is Team Yamaha coming back?" and an- swers I've gotten have ranged from, "It's been discussed," to, "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" It seems the desire to bring back Team Yamaha is there. Which brings us to the next point—Chad Reed. Reed spent his first seven years in the USA racing in one capacity or another for Yamaha. He started at the now-defunct Yamaha of Troy team in 2002, then went to Team Yamaha for the next few years, before rounding out his time at Yamaha with a couple of years racing Supercross only for L&M Yamaha. After he shut his TwoTwo team down, Reed has posted pictures of a new YZ450F, as well as a couple of videos of him riding it. It seems that Reed is getting along with the new YZ450F, and I think he's going to end up being the primary rider (maybe Supercross-only) for the resurgence of THE RETURN OF BIG BLUE

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