    |
 |
|
|
|
Team Shift Motul Suzuki’s Daryl Hurley annihilated the competition to seal a dominant win in the opening round of the Australian Motocross Nationals Championship at Wanneroo today.
Scoring back to back victories in Western Australia following last week’s Supercross Masters round win, Hurley qualified fastest and then outclassed his rivals in the two 30-minute motos.
The reigning Australian Motocross Champion was running in second place behind Cody Cooper in the first moto until an accident back in the pack brought out the red flag to stop the race around half-distance. Cooper took the lead on the restart but it was short lived as Hurley passed him on the opening lap.
The Team Shift Motul Suzuki rider was never headed from that point and greeted the chequered flag 26 seconds ahead of second placed Cooper.
In race two, Daniel Reardon took the holeshot, followed by US import Timmy Weigand with Hurley in third place. After assessing Weigand for the first three laps, Hurley made his move up into second, then, within a couple more laps, the 30-year-old had also despatched Reardon and assumed the race lead, piloting his RM-Z450 to race and round victory to take an early lead in the championship.
Hurley’s team-mate, Luke Burkhart experienced a tougher start to the motocross season as a wrist injury forced him to withdraw from the afternoon’s second 30-minute moto after completing only four laps.
Burkhart will return home to New Zealand to receive medical advice ahead of the next championship event.
The 2006 Motocross Nationals Series now journeys east across the Nullarbor to Gilman (SA) for round two next weekend.
Daryl Hurley:
“It feels really good to have won on such a demanding track… all of my fitness training and everything I’ve done to get my knee in shape has paid off.
“The RM-Z450 was working really well in the sand and that showed in our lap times. The team have done an awesome job to get us off to such a great start to the season.
“The next round at Gilman should be good for Suzuki… the track surface is a bit of everything – mostly sand and clay but I really like it. We won there last year and hopefully we can do it again.”
Luke Burkhart:
“This is a brutal race track. It’s without a doubt the toughest track of the year - definitely not the sort of place to be carrying an injury.
“I gave it a go and got some points in the first race, but I couldn’t feel my hand by the end of it. Wanneroo is such an unforgiving track and I was jeopardising my whole season in the second race. I really like the track at Gilman and provided I can make progress with my wrist, I should be able to get a good result and make up some lost ground.”
Jay Foreman – Team Shift Motul Suzuki Team Manager:
“I’m really happy with the result here today. The whole team worked very hard to have the bike prepared for racing in the sand here and we got it right.”
