It was a bit of a mixed bag of results for all three Australian's at the second round of the 2019 World Championship held at Matterly Basin on the weekend.
In the MX1 class, Dean Ferris aboard his Monster Energy Yamaha continued to find speed all weekend. After finishing the qualifying race on Saturday in 18th, Ferris found his flow late in the opening moto on Sunday, climbing to 15th position.
Unfortunately, that was all but the end of the weekend for the current three-time Australian MX1 champ, with a first turn crash putting him out of the second moto.
Honda 114 motorsports Mitch Evan's continued his round one form during the qualifying race with an excellent 4th place finish, while Husqvarna's Jed Beaton in his first GP for the team was also impressive in 13th. It was Beaton who lead the way for the Aussies in moto one with another impressive ride finishing inside the top ten in 9th, while Evan's struggled to recover from an early race crash that left him with a trip through the pits and nearly a lap down.
Evan's rebounded in the second moto and while still not mistake free was able to card an 8th place finish, while Beaton rounded out the weekend with a 10th place overall result with a 13th in race 2.
THE DREAM AINT OVER How much did it suck to Australia's Chad Reed go down hard at the start of the main event in Seattle, along with current Australian Supercross champion Justin Brayton. In an unfortunate sequence of events, a small bobble by Reed turned into a big pile-up of riders, leaving the JGR Suzuki racer with a collapsed lung, eight broken ribs and a broken scapula.
Amazingly despite all the injuries, Reed announced via Instagram that he would be back, indicating he has every intention of lining up for his 250th Monster Energy Supercross main event start in the future and is taking aim at the season finale in Las Vegas in just six weeks!
The crash, in the end, had more than just an effect on both Reed's and Brayton's seasons.
With the track still not clear at the conclusion of the opening lap and with the red cross flag still displayed, championship hopefull and race leader at the time, Marvin Musquin jumped through the section of track he should have rolled and in turn, was eventually penalised precisely how the rule book states.
The French rider was docked the equivalent points of two positions behind his finishing position (1st) plus an addition two points and his purse money.
However the rule does not dock him the standing of the official winner of the event, so he will go down in history as the race winner and still collect his race win bonus from KTM. But that might be of little comfort with the penalty taking him back to being 14 points behind championship leader and team-mate Cooper Webb. Without the penalty, the gap is only 7 points with five races remaining!
TAKE 2, LETS HEAD TO WONTHAGGI
