Chad Reed raced his way onto the podium at Anaheim II. Image: Simon Cudby.

Dual American and World Supercross Champion Chad Reed is confident that his trip to Australia toward the end of last year was mostly positive in the lead-up to the 2013 Monster Energy Supercross series.

Reed has had a gradual start to the US season after completing and winning three rounds of the Terex Australian Supercross Championships, but that trip didn’t affect his preparation for the AMA series.

After sitting out much of last year with a knee injury, Reed used the Australian series to get seat time under race conditions, but wasn’t able to use the brand new Showa SFF Air Fork back home.

So far in the US, Reed has finished fourth at both Anaheim I and Phoenix, before improving to a third place podium at A2 last weekend. He’s now third in the title chase.

“A lot of the issues we were having, at the time they didn’t really have parts to fix it, the air fork was so new,” Reed said of his trip home. “I raced Monster Cup with it, but wasn’t able to take it to Australia at that point, because we didn’t have the program for it or the tools for it.

“It would have been nice to do three races with it 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.

“The issues I had, I kind of rode around them. Not to be negative, but obviously you don’t have guys there going [Ryan] Villopoto’s speed or [James] Stewart’s speed, [Trey] Canard’s speed and all that kind of stuff. You know, not being disrespectful to them but that’s kind of how it is, so I was able to win and do good.

“But from a confidence point of view, I think it was awesome. If you saw at Phillip Island, I was kind of a guy riding around there on a bumpy, slick track, with my hands tied behind my back. I really couldn’t push, didn’t win easily and Jay [Marmont] pushed me the whole way.

“The next race at Toowoomba it was muddy so it was hard to tell, then at the next race in Newcastle, the track was 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 [Daniel] McCoy was a little stronger, a little bigger.

“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.”

For the complete interview with Reed completed by MotoOnline at Angel Stadium last weekend, click here.