News: Reed is on.....Vodafone?

From Motoonline.com.au - Australia’s dual world champion Chad Reed launched TeamVodafone’s Supercross effort in Darling Harbour today, unveiling the Honda CRF450R that he’ll race in the Super X opener at Newcastle this weekend. MotoOnline.com.au was at the launch amongst a host of national media outlets. For the full rundown on Reed’s TeamVodafone signing click here.

Chad Reed has signed with Vodafone? Anyone ever heard of them? A car racing team apparently, can't say that I follow Supercar too much. JGR has exceeded more than a few expectations with their team, so maybe this is the beginning of a trend for the four-wheel crews. Anyhoo, Reed finally has a deal, but upon further perusing this article, I found that it is only a one week deal at this point. One week? Is the phone really that silent for Chad Reed? Seriously, this guy is fast and markets the shit out of himself. I know a lot of people have been upset about the amount he tweets, but the man understands the marketing capabilities of social media. You cannot deny that he has generated a lot of buzz over himself in the past month or so. My point is that if I am a major brand making moves in motocross, I want a rider who people pay a lot of attention to, and Reed's speed combined with his vastly overused Twitter account garner him a lot of attention.

I have heard whispers that Reed may be considering moving on to auto racing if he does not get a deal soon, which would totally suck for the 450 class. The lack of competition for the big bikes is a major problem right now, and I know I speak on behalf of myself and several others when I say that there were several times this year when I would watch only the 250 class and just ignore the 450s completely. I know that Canard, Pourcel, and Weimer (maybe) will provide some much needed battles in the 450s, but Reed is still an essential factor, especially in supercross. Hopefully this Vodafone thing is just a stepping stone into a new Honda team in the US.