When we first arrived at the race venue of the 2nd round of the Australian National Series, we had to scratch our heads a little bit. Where was the hill? Where was anything? And a tumble weed tumbled by.

But when we got to the top of Mt. Major, which should be renamed Dusty Anthill, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the track looked pretty darn cool. Off camber drifty corners(actually not one berm on the entire track), loose rocky chutes, natural rock drops and more high speed drifty corners to the finish. It was about the same length of the National Champs track, so the top men would be under 2 minutes. Rad!

As well as the challenge of how loose and dusty it was(you almost had a foot out in every corner), the first day of practice was 41 degrees. We were melting! Lucky we had a pool back at our old motel.

The second day of practice was much cooler but the winds were so high, you were getting blown off line and sometimes off the entire track. There was carnage everywhere as well as a lengthy course hold after a few pretty serious injuries. Despite the sketchiness, Chris and I both managed to have clean runs and seeded fastest.

Race day was back in the mid 30’s but the wind had died down a bit making it a bit easier to ride. However, the track had gotten more blown out over the course of the weekend, so it was a bit more difficult to keep your tires gripping. You definitely could not be a perfectionist on this track, every run was different. In my final, I would have liked to knock a few seconds off my seeding time but a few mistakes and a lack of flow on my part put me a second slower. But I can’t complain too much since I still came out on top. Chris was the last man down and smashed the mens field by about 4.5 seconds,  Shaun O’Conner in second, Rhys Atkinson in third and Josh Button who qualified 2nd had a nasty crash at the bottom of the rock chute and DNF’d. He is fine but is probably still washing the red dust off!

So overall, another successful weekend. It’s back home to Queensland to unpack our bags till the next round at Thredbo in about 3 weeks time.