NZ SUPERBIKES

AT STUFF AT

ATIONALS

This season’ s New Zealand Superbike Championships have been a bookie’ s nightmare, with race winners impossible to predict in a series that has produced so much edge-of-the-seat dog-fighting. While his title hopes were buried two months ago, Taupo’ s Scott Moir showed he is no quitter and he once again proved his trophy-winning potential at the third round of four in the national superbike series at Hampton Downs on March 3-4. He’ ll no doubt be a potent force at the fourth and final round on his home track in Taupo( on March 17-18). The 33-year-old won the overall in the superbike class at Hampton Downs, but there were actually three different winners in the premier class that weekend, making it almost impossible to predict who might win races at Taupo. Moir’ s 2-1-3 score-card in the three Superbike races gave him the edge at Hampton Downs over series leader Sloan Frost, the Wellington man taking a“ safe and sensible” approach to protect his points lead, while Glen Eden’ s Daniel Mettam claimed the third step on the podium. It has been a mostly stellar season for Moir thus far – he won the Formula One class at the pre-nationals Suzuki Series, which wrapped up with the iconic street races at Whanganui on Boxing Day, and then he also won the F1 class at Paeroa’ s Battle of the Streets race meeting last month. The only reason that Moir does not represent a greater threat to Frost’ s national title bid is that he crashed his bike at both the earlier rounds in the South Island. Frost refused to be drawn into some of the intense battling that took place at Hampton Downs,“ doing just what was required” to continue his relentless march towards the 2018 championship title. That policy worked a treat too, because Frost therefore avoided tangling with trouble, while several of his key rivals each suffered disastrous crashes at the North Waikato circuit. Frost had started the weekend a solid 24 points ahead of his nearest challenger, Whakatane Honda man Mitch Rees, and his 1-3-4 score-card over the three Superbike class races was, surprisingly, enough for him to boost to 47 points his advantage over Rees. Australian visitor Robbie Bugden( Yamaha) won the all-important third and final Superbike race of the weekend at Hampton Downs, the 15-lapper that also came with TT Trophy title honours.