15 Jan 2012

Waikato’s Josiah Natzke had no problem defending his national supercross crown in the 85cc class this season and he even went one better, claiming third overall in the big bike class as well.

The Hamilton rider took his favoured Yamaha YZ85 to wrap up the three-round series with another hat-trick of wins in the Junior Lites (85cc) class at the final round in Taupo on Saturday afternoon, completing the clean sweep of nine wins from nine starts.

He was the only rider in any class to finish the series unbeaten.

Natzke then rode an 85cc Yamaha bored out to 103cc and, despite racing this small two-stroke against the 250cc four-strokes of all the other riders in the Junior 250 class, he nailed down third spot overall.

“I didn’t have too many problems against the bigger bikes, except the last race of the championship when I crashed into another rider on the ground in front of me. I didn’t have any way of avoiding him,” said the just-turned 13-year-old.

“I still managed to finish fourth in that race,” said Natzke, who starts as a year nine pupil at Hamilton Boys’ High School this year.

In the 85cc class Natzke led a Yamaha 1-2-3, winning comfortably ahead of Winton’s Kyle Hartley and another South Island rider, Blake James, of Broomfield.

For both Hartley and James, the series was something of a steep learning curve, neither rider having raced supercross at this level in the past.

“I had only ridden two supercross events before tackling this year’s nationals said the 13-year-old Hartley.

For James, too, it was a fresh experience.

“This season is the first time I’ve raced supercross. I didn’t think I’d go quite as well as this,” said James, who admitted he have given himself “a few frights” during the series.

Other class winners this season were Mount Maunganui’s Cody Cooper (Senior Open Class), Queenstown’s Scotty Columb (Seniors Lites) and Timaru’s Josh May (Juniors Lites).