It’s hard to believe that three years have passed us by since Australian moto fans last had the opportunity to witness our own greatest of all time, Chad Reed, racing on home soil. The last time Reed competed here was during the 2012 Terex Australian Supercross Championship in his hometown of Newcastle.

At the time, Reedy, who’d been out for the majority of the year with a knee injury, signed up for three rounds of the championship (Phillip Island, Toowoomba and Newcastle) in an effort to get himself up to speed before the 2013 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship just two short months later.

The hit-out was also supposed to be a chance for the new-look TwoTwo Motorsports Honda team to come to grips with the new Showa SFF-Air fork, but with parts unavailable after the Monster Energy Cup to make the necessary mods, Reed opted to return to the conventional spring fork for his three races.

Image: Simon Makker.

“It would have been nice to do three races with [the air fork] in Australia, get a better understanding of it, so I would say the downside of going home was just basically riding with what I had,” Reed explained later on. “I don’t ever regret anything, so I think that my experience down there was positive, but the only negative was that we couldn’t take the air fork and I wasn’t able to learn in race conditions what it was going to be like.”

While Phillip Island and Toowoomba were killer races in their own right, it was the Newcastle round that was the real icing on the cake. A fizzing crowd of 10,000 turned up to witness Reed engage in hand-to-hand combat with defending champion Jay Marmont, Ben Townley and Todd Waters around a wide-open, challenging track.

After missing the opening round of the series, Reed’s chances of pegging back series leader Jay Marmont were slim at best, but that didn’t stop him from putting on a hell of a riding display. As you’d expect in front of his local crowd, Reedy set the early pace in practice and qualifying, then beat Marmont straight up in their heat race together.

Come the 20-lap main event, Carlton Dry Honda Thor Racing’s Townley ripped a great holeshot, but his moment in the spotlight was short-lived as Reed took command of the race on the opening lap then set about putting the rest of the field to the sword.

Image: Simon Makker.

Behind him all manners of scraps took place as Team Motul Pirelli Suzuki’s Todd Waters tailed Reed before succumbing to a hard-charging CDR Yamaha’s Daniel McCoy. DMC held second for half the race before Marmont closed the gap and eventually snuck past.

The night, though, belonged to the 22 as he kept the hammer down for the entirety of the moto to win by almost 25 seconds. To cap off the successful campaign back home, he also led every lap of each of the three main events he entered. With his three victories he narrowed the points gap on Marmont to 12 points and finished the series in second place.

“I’ve really found my feet this past week, coming back home and getting settled in has made me really comfortable and I feel like I am back on track and ready for Anaheim 1,” he said afterward. “The track was awesome and a little more US style, in my hometown, and the week before we made a few adjustments to the bike that kind of helped a little bit. So you know, my advantage over Jay and McCoy was a little bigger. I also can’t thank all of the fans enough for coming out, it is great for the sport to have so many people trackside.”

Next weekend Australian fans will again have the opportunity to see the Kurri Kurri native in the flesh at the highly anticipated AUS-X Open event at Sydney’s Allphones Arena. With a revolutionary track design and format, Australia’s best racers and FMX riders and a record huge prize purse on offer, the two-day event will promises to be an absolute cracker. See you there!