NZ Insider No.67: The Star Of The Show

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

Ben Townley was the star of the show for Team New Zealand at the Motocross of Nations over the weekend at the famous Ernée circuit in France. BT proved he can still run with the best in the world throughout the weekend, culminating in what many considered the ride of the weekend in the final MXGP/Open class moto, pushing current MXGP World Champion, Romain Febvre, just as he pushed Ricky Carmichael ten years earlier.

Led by Townley in the MXGP class, with Yamaha’s Kayne Lamont in MX2 and Honda’s Cody Cooper in Open, Team New Zealand finished eighth Overall out of 36 teams, one position behind Australia in seventh.

While Lamont struggled with mechanical failures, as well as Coops having an up and down weekend, Townley’s results helped the team achieve a solid top ten result, proving we are still among the top motocross nations in the world, and justifying our attendance at the prestigious event. There have been a number of people in the Kiwi MX fraternity who voiced their opposition on sending a team to France, but this result will help to silence those critics.

Josiah Natzke has begun preparations for his 2016 season aboard the new KTM 250SX-F which he will use for select events during the upcoming Kiwi summer moto season, and then through into his debut in the fiercely competitive European EMX250 Championship next year.

After speaking with KTM team management at Ernée over the weekend, we can confirm that the details of his KTM Factory Junior team structure are now in the final stages, with a new team manager all but confirmed.

In other news, Aussie Dean Ferris announced he will now leave the GP circus after he wasn’t able to get a decent ride for next year and will return to Australia for the 2016 season with the CDR Yamaha team, as well as join the Altherm JCR Yamaha team in New Zealand. He will ride a YZ450F in the MX1 class, alongside Kayne Lamont in MX2. Kiwi moto fans can expect to see Ferris make a number of trips across the Tasman over the next few months for select events, including spending time at Josh Coppins’ team base near Nelson to train and test his new Yamaha before an attempt at dethroning Coops for the NZ MX1 title. Upon hearing the news, Coops replied, “waste of money, I’ll still beat him!”

Coppins confirmed his team will feature two riders for the upcoming season, along with Ethan Martens who again will receive satellite support as he has done over the last couple of seasons.