GREEN ON VERGE OF AORC OUTRIGHT!

This weekend, when Australia’s top off-road racers do battle at the final two rounds of the 2023 Yamaha Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC) in Dungog, NSW, 33-year-old Josh Green is poised to do what he’s never done before – win the national series’ coveted Outright crown!

So, after finishing the season in second or third Outright in the AORC more times than Greeny cares to remember over his 12-year AORC career, what’s the math look like for the wily old ShopYamaha rider as we head into the AORC decider? According to our calculations (see Transmoto’s 2023 AORC Outright Table below), Green is sitting on a pretty comfortable 27-point lead in the Outright standings; ahead of his teammate and reigning AORC Outright champ, Kyron Bacon. And with a 25-point buffer in his E2 class, Green is also well placed to defend the E2-class title.

But what other title scraps are worth keeping your eye on over the weekend at Dungog? Well, there’s a heap of them across a smorgasbord of Senior and Junior and Women’s classes. But here’s what’s on our radar:

• After returning from a mid-season busted femur and getting straight back into his winning ways at Kyogle in mid September, ShopYamaha’s Kyron Bacon has rocketed back up to second place in the Outright points, but still sits in fourth in his E1 class – he’s 2 points off third, 10 points off second and 14 points behind class leader, Cooper Sheidow. And with Bacon’s run of good form (and his recent standout performance at the Portuguese round of the EnduroGP World Championship), something tells us that there’s likely to be some position changes in E1 after this weekend.

• With just 4 points separating Husky vet, Stefan Granquist, and KTM’s standout rookie, Riley McGillivray, at the top of the E3 class, Dungog promises to serve up a ding-dong battle for these two big-bore-wrangling big blokes – both of whom have finished every round so far in 2023 on the E3 podium, and will each be gunning for their first Pro-class national title win this weekend.

• The EJ (Under 18) class’s Wil Dennett has been an absolute revelation this year, notching up seven class wins from eight rounds to carry a very healthy 27-point lead over Billy Hargy heading into Dungog. What’s been most impressive about Dennett, though, is his Outright results – in particular, his 2-3 Outright scorecard at the recent Kyogle rounds (that’s the AORC’s highest Outright finish for an EJ rider ever, bettering Daniel Sanders’ long-standing fourth Outright at a cross-country round back in 2014). Sadly, Dennett will never get to know where he’ll finish the 2023 season in the Outright standings. Currently, he sits in fifth Outright, but with the EJ class using a separate (private property) course for Dungog’s Enduro-format rounds (due to public road licencing issues for Under 18s), EJ-class riders won’t be able to collect Outright points at the series finale. Suffice to say that Dennett has proven he’s one of the best young prospects the AORC has seen for a decade, and we’ll track his future with great interest.

• With a 32-point margin over second place’s Emelie Karlsson in the EW (Women’s) class, Jess Gardiner is odds-on to rack up her eighth AORC title win. Yep, eight! And that’s on top of the 30-year-old JGR Yamaha rider’s seven A4DE wins. Speaking of Gardiner and her JGR Yamaha team, watching her just-turned 16-year-old protégé, Danielle Macdonald, dice with the fastest Junior boys (Under 16) has made for fascinating viewing all season. So, will Dungog see Macdonald breakthrough for her first Outright win in the AORC’s Junior categories, male or female? What an achievement that would be!