hands,” he said.
His one “poor” result was after he had been shunted
into a berm and crashed, dropping him back to fifth
position. He battled back to settle for a runner-up
finish in that race, behind Taupo’s Brad Groombridge,
and he won the title comfortably in the end, taking
the crown by nine points from former national TT
champion Groombridge.
One class that did go down to the wire was the Senior
125cc bike class where Bay of Plenty’s former world
motocross champion Ben Townley ruled proceedings
on day one, but then had issues with a failing spark
plug in the first of Sunday’s three races in the class,
72 KIWI RIDER
dropping him back to finish only seventh in that race.
This opened the door for the surprise fastest qualifier
in this class, Orewa’s Joseph Andrell, to take over the
championship lead.
But Townley was back to his best in winning the final
two Senior 125cc races of the weekend and he
eventually clinched the trophy by just one point from
Andrell.
Hamilton’s Reef Wheki won all five races in the
combined Junior 12-16 years’ 125cc and 14-16 years’
250cc class, while Oparau’s Hunter Scott cleaned up in
the Junior 13-16 years’ 85cc class and Cambridge’s
Jared Hannon was similarly dominant in winning five