Taupo Tussle

There were plenty of sparks flying at round 1 of the Suzuki Series. But it was BRM’s photographer, Craig Dawson, who caught all the action…

The pile-up in race 2 of the superbike race is likely to determine the outcome of the series, with defending champion Whakatane’s Tony Rees (Honda) eventually DNF’ing the restarted race, and Taupo’s Scotty Moir (Suzuki) capitalising on the drama by taking the win. With only three rounds to the Suzuki Series (Manfeild Dec 17 / Whanganui Boxing Day), it’s consistency that’s going to reap rewards. But let’s not forget Mitch Rees, who put in an incredible performance that saw him leading almost all of the laps of the second race at Taupo.

We thought we’d catch up with the guys involved and see what it was like from their point-of-view.

Tony Rees – Team Rees Racing

“From what I understand, the door closed on Al who tagged Scott, who tagged me. It was just part of racing. It all happened really quick, but I had time to think: “ah shit, this isn’t going to go well”. It was a pretty quick flight for me, but it did screw up the bike. I got back out on the spare, but I’d made a rookie mistake, it wasn’t ready to race, but we did anyway. I’m not angry about it — it happens. Pretty sore leg though from knee to hip and some deep muscle bruising as you’d expect, along with some long hours putting the bike back together, but we’re good for the next round.”

Scotty Moir – Team Suzuki NZ

“So yeah, I was coming up pretty tight on the inside, and then Al reckoned he hit the white line and washed out the front, which led to him collecting me and then Tony got collected too. You can’t get angry about it, it was just one of those things. We got sorted out pretty quickly though, Sloan just came across and said I could take his spare, so we switched the rear shocks off mine and I got back out there. There’s a bit of soreness settling in now, a bit of normal bruising, but we’re good to go for this weekend.”

Check out the gallery below where you can see the incident taking place frame-by-frame, and it’s clear that Tony’s Honda came out of the crash worst. Thankfully all the guys were able to get up and will be back doing battle at round 2 in Manfeild this weekend.