For the first time this year, Chad Reed put his name atop the leaderboard following tonight’s thrilling San Diego Supercross, round seven of the THQ AMA Supercross Series and round nine of the THQ World Supercross GP Series. And he did it in dramatic fashion, passing series points leader and the winner of the previous five races Ricky Carmichael on the last lap.
Carmichael, on the Team Makita Suzuki RM250, took the lead from Jeremy McGrath on the first lap and pretty much set the pace for most of the race, while Team Yamaha’s Reed, who had control of second place by the second lap, matched Carmichael lap for lap – about 3-4 seconds back. The two riders quickly pulled away from the rest of the pack, while Carmichael maintained that gap for most of the race.
Lappers, however, figured into this one early, as Carmichael and Reed began catching the tail end of the pack by the sixth lap. It wasn’t until about the 17th lap that Reed started to noticably make up ground on Carmichael, who later said that he got hung up behind one lapped rider, and as they took the white flag, Reed was knocking on Carmichael’s back door.
As they approached another group of slower riders, Reed saw his chance and dove to the inside of Carmichael in a turn and made a clean pass on the Suzuki rider.
Carmichael made one desperate attempt to get back by Reed but went down in a whoop section just before the checkered flag. Reed flew across the finish line, earning his first win of the season, while Carmichael had plenty of time to salvage second, officially finishing 24.581 seconds behind Reed.
The only rider that Reed and Carmichael didn’t lap was the third-place finisher, Amsoil/Chaparral Honda’s Mike LaRocco, who passed David Vuillemin on the last lap to earn a spot on the podium.
Fourth place went to Vuillemin, while Amsoil/Chaparral Honda’s Kevin Windham rounded out the top five overall.
Team Honda’s Jeremy McGrath ended up finishing 10th after nabbing the holeshot and banging bars with the front-runners for the first part of the race.
The 125cc West Coast final was just as exciting. Three previous winners, Billy Laninovich, Ivan Tedesco and Nathan Ramsey, all got out in front early, but the race ended up boiling down to a two-man shootout between Tedesco, on the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki, and Ramsey, on the Red Bull KTM.
Tedesco passed Laninovich on the third lap, while Ramsey got into second on the fourth lap. From there, Ramsey slowly reeled in the defending West Coast champ and passed him cleanly on the sixth lap. And for the remaining six laps, Ramsey led Tedesco around the technical San Diego track by just a few seconds, and he went on to win, despite an exciting last-lap push by Tedesco. Ramsey took his second win of the series just 2.782 seconds ahead of Tedesco, who also has two wins.
Third place went to Honda’s Andrew Short after passing Laninovich on the third lap.
Laninovich went on to finish fourth, while fifth place went to Amsoil/Chaparral Honda Thomas Hahn.
Tedesco, however, still has a solid lead in the points standings. He now leads Ramsey by 36 points with two rounds left. Yamaha of Troy’s Danny Smith, who was second in points going into the San Diego round, crashed out of the final, earning just one point on the night. He dropped all the way back to fifth.
In the 250cc class, Carmichael still enjoys a 29-point lead over Reed.
Despite a threat of rain, more than 53,000 spectators filled Qualcomm Stadium. Although rain did fall briefly before the start of the evening’s program, the track held up well throughout the course of the day and night.
