KIWI RIDER 05 2018 VOL.1 | Page 72

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