USA Insider No.165: Chad By Day & Night

Transmoto’s weekly web-exclusive column, the USA Insider, penned by Jason Weigandt, presented by Ipone.

Chad Reed’s 2015 season has been conducted under the Black Flag cloud. The points lost at the third race of the year essentially eliminated him from title contention, so while Chad could no longer focus on a title, he would instead focus on the Black Flag situation itself. He’s truly and really pursuing legal action over this (I’m not sure exactly toward whom, but my guess is the FIM, or FIM official, John Gallagher, who made the ruling). Chad’s compiling as much evidence as he can, trying to prove what we already know: riders have always settled scores with each other on the track, and it doesn’t make any sense to all of a sudden DQ one rider, one time, for it.

At San Diego, Chad put an aggressive pass on Eli Tomac, Tomac tried to get him back in the next turn and ended up crashing himself. Chad taunted him in the tunnel after the race, and then said Eli made “A dumbass pass” in a post-race interview. Eli wasn’t happy with any of that, so when he had the chance to put a block pass on Reed in Dallas, he, as told he me, “Gave him some love back.”

Well, that’s evidence of riders taking things into their own hands, so Reed was more than happy to take that evidence and tell Gallagher about it Friday before Atlanta. Suffice to say they agreed to disagree. So, Chad actually planned on continuing the rivalry into Saturday’s race. “I’m not mad at Eli at all. The way I see it, it’s just a racing thing and Eli’s one up on me,” Chad told me with a grin. Clearly, this was not over.

I probably spent 20 minutes talking to Chad on Saturday morning, and this Black Flag/lawsuit/Eli/Gallagher stuff dominated our conversation. What a difference a few hours make. That was at 11am. By 11pm, Chad returned to his rig, and fans were waiting with a giant chorus of cheers. There was no talk of Black Flags, penalties or rough riding. This was just a straight-up race win — something Chad will take over any kind of revenge or retaliation.