COOPER
West Auckland’s Hamish Harwood had to
take the good with the bad at Rotorua, the
second round of four in this year’s motocross
nationals, but he still emerged with his title
hopes intact in two categories. Harwood, a
23-year-old builder from Royal Heights took his
CML Makita KTM 250SX-F into battle at Rotorua,
determined to defend his crown and extend
his championship-winning run to a fourth
consecutive season, but he came under intense
fire from Aussie invader Wilson Todd (LMC
Husqvarna 250F) who won the day.
After two of four rounds, Todd had won three
of the six races in the class, but an eighth in one
race in Taranaki and a fourth in the first race
in Rotorua meant he was three points adrift of
the ultra-consistent Harwood, although that’s
actually not a huge deficit in the big scheme of
things, with plenty of racing still to come.
84 KIWI RIDER
Harwood had the measure of the 2018
Australian MX2 champion at round one of
the Fox-sponsored New Zealand nationals in
Taranaki two weeks earlier, but Todd fought
back hard at Rotorua, winning the day with a
4-1-1 score-card over the three MX2 races.
Fortunately for Harwood, his incredible
consistency, demonstrated by a 2-2-4 score-
card at Rotorua, enabled him to keep hold of
his series lead, although Harwood’s edge at the
top of the standings had been shaved back to
just three points.
A dual-class ironman, Harwood (CML Makita
KTM125) remained unbeaten in the chase for
125cc class honours and, after Rotorua, he
led that category by 28 points from Ngatea’s
former national 125cc champion Ben Broad,
with Rotorua’s Josh Bourke-Palmer third overall
after two rounds, 13 points further back.