Dan Reardon believes a strong sign off at the weekend’s Monster Energy AUS-X Open Sydney, the final round of the Australian Supercross Championship, will play an important role in cementing his future plans as a supercross-only rider.

The popular Gold Coast athlete has raced supercross internationally throughout the Australian off-season for the past two years, a unique campaign in which he’s endeavouring to do once again in the early months of 2019.

Reardon, running a self-managed operation with help of Yamaha this year, put on a stellar display at Qudos Bank Arena on Saturday night, becoming the highest-placed Australian at the AUS-X Open to claim third, promoting himself to third in the domestic SX1 series rankings.

“If you talk about future plans, it’s always important to sign off in a good way,” Reardon explained to MotoOnline.com.au. “Unfortunately our industry is a really funny one in the world of sports – you get this ‘you’re only as good as your last ride’ sort of thing, but I disagree with it.

“We put a lot of work into our season, and sometimes things just don’t go right – this year I had two minor mechanicals from racing incidents – it hurts the points and people think that maybe ‘he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do or he’s not as fast as he was’.

“It is important still, especially the last round because I’m in the middle of my season – I don’t really run into an off-season now because I’ll race January through to March, depending on where I go, whether that’s the UK, Europe or America.”

The number 122 has a number of supercross options to pursue next year, although he insisted his strongest talks have been with teams in the Arenacross UK championship – the same series he contested at the beginning of the year.

“Both options are on the table, but I’m probably more in more in-depth conversations with the guys in the UK and even some one-off European races,” he continued. “The one-off supercross events they have in Europe are awesome and they’re quite easy to travel to from the UK. The plan is to definitely be racing, it’s just trying to figure out what will work out best.”

Reardon wound up with 90 points in the 2018 Australian Supercross Championship, earning two podiums finishes in the process.