The Point: Reed on Marmont's switch
Australia's greatest ever sounds off on Jay Marmont's switch to Monster Energy Kawasaki for 2012.
Australia’s greatest ever sounds off on Jay Marmont’s switch to Monster Energy Kawasaki for 2012.
Australia’s greatest ever dirt bike export Chad Reed knows a thing or two about switching teams and adapting to new surroundings. Before he was team owner of TwoTwo Motorsports, Reed experienced his fair share of team swaps and ultimately made them a success on most occasions.
With Jay Marmont switching from Craig Dack’s CDR Rockstar Energy Drink Yamaha outfit to Troy Carroll’s Monster Energy Kawasaki effort for 2012, we couldn’t think of anybody better to comment on the topic in this special Chad Reed edition of The Point.
Reed rode for CDR Yamaha in Australia during the early stages of his career and won titles. He also won the 2009 Super X title aboard a Kawasaki in his own program, which was before Carroll was in charge of the factory squad.
MotoOnline.com.au spoke to Reed straight after Marmont’s future was confirmed to get his thoughts on the entire situation, the pluses, and the minuses. When Chad Reed speaks, we all lsiten. Enjoy!
Chad Reed is Australia's greatest in history and knows what it's like to switch teams. Image: Alex Gobert.
I think in this situation it’s always a risk, but you can look at it from so many different ways. My opinion is that he’s leaving a race team that is a proven winner – a team that gets the job done.
Even when everything’s kind of stacked against them, I think Dacka has been around the block and so has Gary Benn and Shawn Hodgetts. He’s leaving a very well organised operation, probably the benchmark not just because of having good riders.
They’ve all had experience such as Dacka’s own career, plus Gary’s time in Europe and Shawn’s time between Australia and New Zealand. I see that he’s leaving probably the best organisation in Australia to one that doesn’t have a lot of stability – it’s only one year old or so as far as it being just Troy and Kawi.
But the upside is that Jay has been at Yamaha a long time and I know that the Yamaha probably isn’t the best product on the market. He’s going to have a lot of new, fresh and exciting things for him to deal with.
His first initial feelings will be really positive and he’ll be pumped, but I think come race time he’ll miss the organisation that he just left a little bit.
In the off-season, the fact that Jay actually has four months to prepare, if Troy’s team is right in with Pro Circuit then I think Jay will be more than comfortable.
I know Mitch [Payton] builds the engine and suspension, and I believe that as a motorcycle it’s far better than the one he just won on. I think as far as equipment and Jay being happy with the bike, he’s going to be even faster and stronger than what he was on the Yamaha.
Jay Marmont will have four months to get race ready in his switch from Yamaha to Kawasaki. Image: Sport The Library.
But as far as the organisation within the team, it’s not a negative because I don’t know Troy’s team or anything like that, I just know that from jumping from team to team, you learn and become comfortable with your surroundings.
Jay had obviously been at Yamaha for four years now, so he was comfortable and it was very much based around him. Everybody knew what he was looking for and how he operated, so Jay is going to learn and everybody around him will have to as well.
They’ll need to learn his sensitive areas and his strong points. Those are things that during testing you can’t replicate that – they are going to have to go through all that at the races.
For the most part though, I think he’ll be good on the new bike and it will be a real positive change for him.
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