ROAD NEWS
WINTLE WINS GIXXER CUP
Wairarapa ’ s Eva Wintle was simply lost for words at the end of her difficult and stressful couple of days of racing at the sixth and final round of this season ’ s New Zealand Superbike Championships at the weekend . The 23-year-old real estate agent from Masterton has been racing motorcycles for just over 12 months now , but in December last year , she was really starting to rock the sport ’ s established stars . The six-round 2023-24 New Zealand Superbike Championship series kicked off just before Christmas , the opening two rounds incorporated within the popular Suzuki International Series , and it all finally wrapped up at Hampton Downs , an integral part of the Star Insurance MotoFest . When Wintle arrived with her Suzuki GSX150F bike at Hampton Downs for the grand finale she enjoyed a healthy lead in the GIXXER 150 class – a competition created seven years ago by Suzuki New Zealand to provide a foundation or nursery ground for fledgling young racers – and knew another solid performance would probably be enough to secure the national title .
With the weather moving swiftly from warm and overcast on Saturday , to wet and wild on Sunday , all the racers ’ best-laid plans went out the window . Thankfully , all the hard work had been done at the previous rounds , so Wintle was able to ride conservatively at Hampton Downs , “ just circulating to finish each race ”, to pocket the necessary points . “ I finished runner-up in my final race of the weekend and now I ’ m national champion . It ’ s a crazy thing to say , eh ?! “ There are not quite any words to ... yeah , I don ’ t have any words to describe how I feel right now ,” she said as she was packing up at the end of racing on Sunday . “ I really didn ’ t think at the start of this weekend that I was going to be able to pull it off .” Napier ’ s Sebastian Mitchell finished overall runner-up to Wintle in the class , while Lower Hutt ’ s Nixon Frost , son of Suzuki ’ s two-time former national superbike champion Sloan Frost , returned from injury late in the series and he accumulated enough points to claim third
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