25 May 2009

With cool weather, just the right amount of rain falling on the Friday and an excellent course layout organised by the Denman Motorcycle Club, everything was in place for the staging of rounds 3 and 4 of the 2009 NSW Pony Express Championships.

TM Bel Ray’s Andy Lloyd again teamed up with his brother Darren to contest rounds 3 & 4 of the Championship.    Both riders posted some very fast laps on Saturday to dominate and win the Pro Class results outright.
For day 2 of the event the organisers decided to run the riders in the reverse direction of virtually the same course as used on day 1.   This proved to be an excellent decision with the course becoming a little faster than the previous day.
Andy and Darren took the lead from the first lap and were building a good buffer on the rest of the Pro Class when Darren suffered a small carburettor problem which cost the team several minutes to make the repairs. From that point a win for the day was considered impossible to achieve so the team concentrated on finishing on the podium for the day.
Results:
Day 1 - 1st place & Day 2 -  3rd place giving the team a valuable 45 points towards the Championship.
Andy’s final lap time on day 2 was the outright fasted time for the weekend.
After the finish Andy said “That was a great Cross Country course, no dust, my Bridgestone tyres gave me fantastic traction and my TM 300 EN, fitted with the JRF Torque Control, was perfect for the fast flowing course that we rode today.  At one point I really thought we had an excellent chance of winning both days, unfortunately as happened today, the smallest problem can cost valuable time and change the results.  With the high standard of competition in the Pro Class in all events this year you cannot afford to give any time away to the other riders.  We are still in a good position to take out the Championship, so now it all comes down the final 2 days of racing of the championship to decide the winners.”
Brett Harris:   Brett, riding his TM Bel Ray 250 EN, continues to lead the over 35 Expert Class by a huge margin. Brett won both round 3 and round 4 at the week end giving him a perfect score of 4 wins from 4 rounds for the Championship.
ISDE Workshop:
Andy, together with the rest of the 2009 Australian ISDE squad, spent 3 days training with Tony Vickers in preparation for the 09 ISDE in Portugal.  Andy felt the training camp was very successful and will prove beneficial to the Australian Team in Portugal this year.