NZ Insider No.36: The Second Round

Transmoto’s weekly web-exclusive column, the NZ Insider, penned by Chris Ritchie.

This week we look back at Sunday’s second round of the 2015 New Zealand Motocross Nationals, held near the South Canterbury settlement of Pleasant Point at the Backflips Dirt Farm. After the opening round a fortnight earlier at New Plymouth’s Barrett Road circuit, there were plenty of question marks surrounding certain riders’ ups and downs, a number of surprises, as well as some misfires.

For round two, we were looking to see if those surprises were going to become the norm for the remainder of the series, or were they were purely flukes, with normality resuming.

With almost the entire South Island suffering a drought with the ground bone dry, the organisers went to all lengths to ensure they had enough water, and laid it on the track in readiness for the highly anticipated national championship round, as well as the South Island Junior Motocross Championship held on the Saturday, creating a double-header of motocross action across both days.

Track preparation was crucial to ensuring a prime surface for racing, and full credit goes to the McKnight family for the efforts, and even with the heavens opening up on Saturday night to ‘assist’ with watering, much of the track was filled with lines, developing into an excellent surface, making for epic racing on Sunday.

In MX1, defending champ Cody Cooper was keen to put an average opening round performance behind him, and did so in emphatic fashion, sweeping all three motos for a maximum haul of 75 points, and in turn grabbing the red plate from round one winner, Scott Columb, as the series now hits the halfway point.

For Columb, an uncharacteristic day began with a massive get-off in practice, yet still managed to salvage 12-11-11 results from the three motos which saw him slip to fifth Overall in the points standings. 2015 season MX1 revelation, John Phillips, shadowed his Honda teammate Coops all day long, and fended off the numerous challenges from the KTM Australia pairing of Luke Styke and Kirk Gibbs, as well as Yamaha’s Kade Mosig to end the day in second, and move past Gibbs to second in points. The Aussie trio of Styke, Mosig and Gibbs rounded out the top five for the day, each separated by only a point a piece.

MX2 on the other hand saw opening round winner, Queensland’s Jay Wilson, increase his domination with three convincing victories to extend his points lead to 20 with two of four rounds now completed. Second for the day was the ever consistent Hamish Harwood, with his 3-2-3 securing the second step on the podium aboard his KTM. Look for the pair to also be MX2 title contenders across the ditch in 2015 in the upcoming MX Nationals.

Third for the day was the leader of the premix brigade, Husky’s Hadleigh Knight. Honda’s Micah Mcgoldrick finished behind Wilson in the first and third encounters, but a crash and subsequent DNF in the second moto put him out of podium contention.

The National 125 class was all Josiah Natzke, like the other two class winners, dominating all three motos for a maximum 75 points for the day. Dropping the MX2 class after round one to concentrate solely on the 125cc class looks to have paid dividends for Natzke, as he builds toward his all-important European expedition in April for the EMX125 European Championship.

Second for the day went to Yamaha’s Cohen Chase, dropping back to his favoured YZ125 for the 2015 Nationals, consistently improving as the series progresses. Third was fellow Yamaha rider, Courtney Duncan.

The series now takes a two-week break before resuming near Rotorua on March 8.