Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 34 AUGUST 25, 2015 P109 Team Yamaha. Now, when Reed's in a good mood, he's the best to talk to. He shoots you straight. When he's in a bad mood, he still shoots you straight, but he tends to talk about all the neg- ative stuff. When he was at Yamaha, even at L&M, one of his consistent complaints about Yamaha was that he fought a constant battle to try and wear riding gear that wasn't blue. He was getting paid good money at the time from Parts Unlimited to showcase Thor riding gear, and Yamaha's policy was that Yamaha racers should be wearing blue gear on their blue bikes. As a photographer, even I tried to inform the guys at Yamaha that the contrast of a dif- ferent color of riding gear would make both the gear and the bike stand out more, not less, but there was some reason Yamaha stuck to their "blue on blue" policy. When Reed left Yamaha officially at the end of 2008 to go to the factory Makita Suzuki team, he was pumped, he was allowed to wear whatever color riding gear he wanted. And with Reed now being Shift Racing's big- gest star, with his own line of TwoTwo gear, you can bet that if he is going to join Team Yamaha—because, remember, he shut down his own team, so he's not going to be racing Yamahas for TwoTwo Motorsports—he's going to write it into his contract that he can wear any color he wants. But here are some things that I don't think are going to happen that have been talked about: 1. Chad Reed to the AutoTrader.com/ JGR/Toyota Yamaha team. This won't happen for multiple reasons. First, he hasn't ever been the type of guy who goes to where the team is located, such as in North Carolina. Reed is more the kind of guy who has the team come to him, such as in Florida or California. Sec- ond, he has less freedom with personal spon- sors and things like that at JGR. Third, JGR already has Justin Barcia, Weston Peick and Phil Nicoletti for 2016. 2. Chad Reed to another start-up Yamaha 450 team. This won't happen because Reed just shut down his own team, and if he wanted to start something completely fresh, he might as well have kept his team going with the amount of work he'd have to do. With the reasons Reed gave for shutting down his team, he's looking for a factory ride with people he knows he can trust to work with him and give him the best possible chance to succeed. That's Team Yamaha, plain and simple. He won a whole lot while he was there, and Keith McCarty has never had anything bad to say about Chad Reed in all the years Reed has been away from Yamaha. The same can be said of Reed talking about Mc- Carty or other people at Yamaha. And here's the final reason I think Team Yamaha is starting back up in 2016: They need a landing spot for these hot, new stars they've got coming up. Jeremy Martin and Cooper Webb—both proven championship racers—are going to be moving up to the 450cc class in 2017. Now, sure, other manufacturers will be bidding for their services, but Yamaha isn't going to want to let either one of them go. And simply put, there isn't enough budget or room for both of them to go to JGR. And who could be better to help a couple young bucks learn the ropes in the 450cc class than a veteran like Chad Reed? Also, who better to help get great baseline setups on this reverse-engine 450 than Chad Reed? I can't think of anybody still racing that could do both of those things better than him. CN

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