Morgan Park bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup wrap/results/points

ASBK 2022 – Round Five
Morgan Park – bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup

Another huge weekend for the riders in Australia’s road racing development series as the mi-bike Motorcycling Insurance Australian Superbike Championship presented by Motul (ASBK) made its way to Warwick to compete at Morgan Park Raceway. Here’s what happened…

bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup Race One

Not something fans of any racing like to see- especially when it comes to junior racing.

But the reality is when one rider jumps, others tend to go with them and for the OJC, it’s a learning process and even when their coach Gary McCoy has drummed it into them, there’s no teacher quite like experience.

Three jumped starts aside, the riders settled into a race rhythm that saw six riders slowly work their way up the road. Watts, Thompson, Paige, Russo, Rende and Hamod worked together and – as befits OJC- against each other. Hamod and Rende faced ten second penalties for their jumped start, so while they were seemingly fighting for the lead, the end of the race would see them relegated outside the top four.

bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup Race One Results

bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup Race Two

Levi Russo was missing from the grid following a crash in the warmup, giving the leaders an easier task, and it was Hudson Thompson who made the most of the opportunity from the start. It wasn’t long before a leading pack broke away, establishing a little over a second between Marcus Hamod in fifth and Ryan Larkin in sixth by the end of lap one.

As they crossed the line for the first of six laps, it was already evident that this race would be hard fought, as Harrison Watts made the move on Thompson to lead by 0.047, with less than half a second separating first from fifth.

Larkin and Alexander Codey did their best in sixth and seventh to catch the leading group, but without the tow it was very difficult work.

Cameron Rende found a way past Watts through Dunlop corner with Hamod now up to third, but it was short lived as Watts had a game plan and took the lead once more just after the line.

Three laps down the leading pack of five was three seconds ahead of the next riders, with plenty of jostling for position throughout each lap. Crossing the line to start lap four – the gap to fifth was under a third of a second.

Watts was still looking strong, taking the bulk of the time in the lead, even if it’s never more than a few corners at a time as this group was not afraid to put the moves on each other on a near-constant basis…

Starting lap five, Bodie Paige with the bright red helmet decided the time was right and took the lead down the straight, continuing to hold on for the entire lap and even over the line – holding off Watts in the tow.

Rende managed to claw his way back in to take the lead once more from Paige, setting up the move on the exit of Michelin corner to hold on through Suzuki corner and into the Yamaha chicane. But right on the back of Rende coming out of the last corner was Paige, who tucked in with a perfectly timed tow to take the win by just 0.011, barely the width of a tyre.

Rende held on to second place with Watts right behind rounding out the podium.

bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup Race Two Results