NZ Insider No.10: Townley’s Speedcross

Welcome to our brand new weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto‘s NZ Insider. Penned each week by Kiwi, Chris Ritchie, the NZ Insider will present the story-behind-the-stories on NZ-related dirt bike happenings across the globe. 

Taupo’s Digger McEwen Park hosted a double-header of sorts over the weekend, with Ben Townley’s Speedcross Open Day on Saturday, followed by their ever-popular club round on Sunday.

Speedcross is BT’s new concept, which combines supercross with speedway, and the Taupo club have kindly modified their supercross facility to suit. They’ve removed some of the jumps (essentially simplifying the track to cater for a wider range of abilities), and make it more ‘Speedcross’ friendly, even with a large wide turn for sliding ‘speedway style’. The speedway element in Speedcross comes from the World Speedway GP format of quickfire races of four riders, usually four laps in length.

While Saturday’s Open Day was another chance for riders to get themselves familiar with the Speedcross format and track, the aim for BT is to take Speedcross to the masses and hold an actual event in the future. We will keep you posted on that!

Over in Europe, at the famous Loket circuit in the Czech Republic, our National 125cc champ, Josiah Natzke, competed in the EMX125 class held in conjunction with the MXGP round.

Moto two was the highlight, as he passed Slovakia’s Richard Sikyna on lap three to move into the lead, which he held for five laps, before succumbing to series leader, Brian Hsu from Germany, and Sweden’s Alvin Ostlund on lap seven. He finished a brilliant third for the moto, and third Overall in his first European championship event. This followed up a terrific fourth in the opening moto on Saturday, after a disastrous qualifying session where he had to go to the LCQ, which he won. Natzke then had only 31^st gate pick, but still managed to get out of the gate, and around turn one in sixth in both motos!

He certainly turned a few heads, including English commentator and ex-GP hero, Paul Malin, who heaped praise on the 15-year-old. Natzke also smoked KTM’s new Dutch star, Davy Pootjes, who signed a KTM contract with Pit Beirer, head of KTM Motorsport, over the weekend!

Natzke now switches his focus to this coming weekend for the next round of the European championship, again held in conjunction with the World MXGP round, this time at the famous sand track of Lommel, Belgium. Follow his European campaign and get in behind our Kiwi boy, #533.

Taupo’s Cohen Chase has also arrived in Belgium and begun preparations for the World Junior Champs at Lierneux, Belgium, which will take place in a fortnights’ time, and has been putting in laps at Lommel.

For our boys back home, their focus switches back to the MX Nationals as the series heads to Raymond Terrace after a three-week break, and there’s only three rounds to go!

Unfortunately for Team Motul Suzuki’s Rhys Carter, a crash on Sunday while practicing at Taupo left him with a broken wrist, and is currently awaiting surgery, ruling him out of the remaining MX Nationals rounds, and a likely trip to Latvia for the Motocross of Nations. One word – gutted!

The Pro Lites championship chase returns with KTM’s Hamish Harwood looking to take his title challenge down to the wire, and close up on series leader, Serco Yamaha’s Luke Clout, while Husky boy, Kayne Lamont, will be looking to shake off the last few rounds which didn’t go to plan, and finish well.