KIWI RIDER JANUARY 2021 VOL2 | Page 31

weekend with his clean sweep of wins , who qualified fastest early on Sunday , then raced to first of his five MX2 race wins , crossing the line half a second ahead of Mangakino ’ s 2020 national MX2 champion Maximus Purvis ( Yamaha ). But , close though as that was , Natzke was just warming up . He won the next race by more than three seconds from Purvis and set the tone for a dominance not often seen in this most frantic of bike classes . For race three , Natzke crossed the finish line more than 14 seconds ahead of Tauranga ’ s former MX2 world champion Ben Townley ( Yamaha ). Race four saw Natzke take the chequered flag by an impressive 15 seconds from Oparau ’ s James Scott ( Honda ) and the fifth and final race was another Natzke master class as he cleared out to win by nearly 25 seconds from runner-up Townley . Natzke , who was about to turn 22 on January 1 , was determined to put the event to good use in terms of his preparation for the nationals , although the unique Summercross format did mix things up somewhat . “ The first MX2 race was quite close , but that was a sprint race , only five laps ( and took barely eight minutes ), so not much chance really for me to break away ,” said Natzke .
“ The second outing was a sprint race too and Max ( Purvis ) was my nearest challenger again , but I just focussed on what I had to do and got the job done . “ The next two races were short too , but the last race of the day was much longer ( 11 laps ).” Clearly leading the points standings after four of the five races , the pressure was off for Natzke , so he chose to set a target for himself . “ Just for fun , I wanted to see how big a gap I could get over the others . That was my goal for race five . I even made a mistake and fell off in that last race , but managed to get up and get going again quickly , so kept my big lead intact .”
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