Mr Motocross Series, Round 2, Horsham, Victoria, Australia.
Round two of the Mr Motocross Series was held on a hard track made slippery by plenty of rain showers throughout the day.
Shayne started the day as most people expected by dominating timed qualifying, setting a time some two seconds faster than his nearest rival.
In Moto One Shayne jumped out of the gate but unfortunately tangled with another rider, losing several places into the first turn. By the time the dust had cleared Shayne found he was down the field in around 10th position, not to be discouraged the former World Champion worked his way back through the field and by the fifth lap was leading the race with his brother Darryll King (Yamaha) in tow. “I got a good start out of the gate, but banged bars with another rider and had to back off a little; I went hard for the first five laps and made it through to the front surprisingly easily. Then Darryll and I pulled away and got into our own little battle!”
Darryll and Shayne swapped the lead between them several times, banging bars and exchanging paintwork right up to the final lap when Darryll made a strong move through some backmarkers to overtake Shayne and take the win by a bike length.
With a considerable amount of rain falling between races the hard track surface for race two was now extremely slippery – Shayne got a good start and tucked in behind a hard charging Cory Sargent (Honda) for second place. The two Honda New Zealand riders managed to break away from the pursuing field with a four second gap back to the pack. With Cory starting to make a break Shayne found he was losing ground to the race leader, then compounded his problems by running off the track on a high speed section and losing valuable time to Cory.
By the time that Shayne rejoined the race he had Darryll King hot on his heels, once again the battle between the two King brothers started, running right up to the last corner of the last lap. This time though the roles were reversed with Shayne finishing second to Cory Sargent and Darryll King finishing in the third spot.
“I take my hat off to Cory – he rode a sensible race, stayed out of trouble and rode away at the front. Darryll and I were having another close race passing backwards and forwards which was great fun but probably slowed us down overall”
Shayne still has a strong hold on the number one spot in the series with the next round scheduled in two weeks in Brisbane.