© 2021
Colin Gulliver and I traveled to Ruapuna raceway to race a proper Motard, with a purpose built dirt section just for motards and everything, we were just a little bit excited.
The track built by shoutout events is going to be used later in the year for a 5 round New Zealand Champs series and a round of the Oceania champs, so this event was a bit of a trial run to see how everything went.
After practice on Friday the dirt section was getting very dusty and powdery in places, due to the lack of rain in the Christchurch area. So a good qualifying time and start in the races would be key.
A few alterations to the track on Saturady morning to avoid the worst of the dust and we were into it. I managed to qualify 2nd fastest just behind Brent Scammell, Colin was 8th fastest and Scott Baird the other rider from Dunedin and running KOARSEgraphics was 11th.
The Event was named Super Saturady and had us motard boys sharing the track with some truck racing and Car Drifting so we had plenty to watch between races.
There was a bit of confusion at the start of the first race as to how the starting lights worked which left me and some other riders with a so so start but I managed to make my way up to 3rd early, but then got passed by Jason fever late in the race to finish 4th.
The second race was better I managed to win this one with nearly a 10second gap over second at the end and I also set the fastest lap time by over a second, so i was feeling pretty good after this one .
This set up an exciting 4 way winner takes all final race with myself and Scam having a 1st and a 4th each and Fever and Chris Manson having a 2nd and 3rd each.
Unfortunately Chris crashed early in the 3rd race and wasn’t a factor but me Scam and Fever went at it passing each other numerous times, great fun defiantly the best race of the day. I have some good go pro footage of this one that I will have to put online. Anyways late in the race I managed to get to the front and pull a small gap on the other 2 but with less than 2 laps to go I got caught and passed by Scam I passed him back then half a lap later Fever got by me I managed to get him back when he over shot a corner. Then Fever pulled up beside me and we hit the last dirt jump leading onto the seal and the final straight to the finish line side by side I was thinking surly this has got to be the last lap but instead of giving us the white flag we got the checkered flag and Fever Beat me by 0.2 of a second, I’m not saying that I would have won if I had known it was the last lap but I would have defiantly ridden that last section of track differently. I did however get the fastest lap time in this race and fastest lap of the day so was pretty stoked with that. Colin ended the day 5th overall I got 2nd and Scott 8th after a dnf in one race. Scott also won the demonstration race at the end of the day the only race that didn’t use the dirt section.
Anyway it was a very fun event and with a few tweaks to the track and a bit of rain to pack the jumps down there should be some good racing coming up over the next 6 months or so, I can’t wait yea!! SuperMoto.
Check out the Shoutout Events page on facebook for more info on the events coming up.
Also i would like to thank Leighton Selfe for taking some of the photos.
Craig
KOARSEfx
© 2021