A great day at the 2008 Western QBE Moto Mayhem Oran Park.
Perfect Blue sky’s greeted the riders and fans to last weekend Western QBE Moto Mayhem at Oran Park Raceway. Over 300 riders and a Healthy crowd witnessed some great action from Australia’s finest riders over the All events held on the day. Motorcycle’s of all kinds, Western QBE Girls, great prize giveaways and plenty of action made for a great day out at Oran Park.
The morning started with the Dirt Action Magazine Moto-X venue with 5 different features running from 10.15am. Starting with the Hardiman ATV quad feature with Paul Worth taking the Honours just holding out Rob Booth and an impressive ride from Michael Roycroft on the debut of the new Cam-am DS450x taking 3rd place.
Then it was out with the Moto-X machines from yester year for the Dirt Action EVO feature, classes were combined here and the winners for the respective classes were ex Mr Motocross legend Dean Burt taking the over 250 EVO class, Garry Blizzard with a win in the Pre 78. Mat Park taking out the EVO up to 250cc and Damien Crane taking Honours in the EVO pre 90.
The next event was into the Sponsorpoint Moto-X lites and Women combined and obviously scored separately. An impressive ride from Kurt Chalker took a close win from Beau Pesic and Dwayne Stadthaus rounding out the top 3. With Amy Boyd showing a class ride to take out the Dirt Max Women’s MX feature from Sarah Clark and Gemma Fennel.
The Sponsorpoint Open Moto-X was a great battle between KTM Mounted and current Australian Supermoto Champion Angus Reekie, Kym Wright, Paul Grant, Danny Ham coming through the pack after a bad start and Enduro Gun Jehi Willis. This was their finishing order with Reekie managing to pull out a gap of 4.8 seconds by the chequered flag.
Next came the Stadium Style Sunny Corner Trailbike Rally Enduro-X feature, with a very demanding short course set-up by the Central Coast Dirt Riders. The veteran and great all rounder Stuart Bennett took the win on his new Yamaha mount from Tom Leach and a great ride for Darren Lloyd secured the final podium spot. A great ride from Adam Schneller, held out Craig Douglas rounding out the top 5.
Jehi Willis was fast, however had some troubles through the massive man made obstacles while running in 2nd place lap 2. Angus Reekie tried the Enduro-X course to make up his third event for the Iron man competition, an impressive 7th in the event gave him valuable points towards the iron man award. In the Ballard’s Junior Enduro-X Lewis Reardon was on fire to win the class from Harley Henning 2nd & Jordan Davis 3rd.
The DHZ Pit-bikes came up next, with the 10” and the 12” being combined but scored separately. Ty Halliday took a convincing win in the 12” by 20 seconds over Ryan Lennox and Alex Gobert took out the 10” class.
With the huge amount of rain over the past few months the Moto-X circuit needed a major renovation with up to ½ metre deep water Ruts everywhere on the Moto-X circuit prior to the event. The Central Coast Dirt Riders die- hard members of the club took on the massive task to make a great course for Sunday’s event and this was achieved in just 1 day. A great job from the club to achieve what they did in the little amount of time they had.
The Lucky gate prize draw was next with a host of great prizes from our event sponsors support for this year’s Moto Mayhem meant the same massive amount of lucky prize giveaways for all lucky ticket holders including riders and crew’s tickets. The major prizes being the 150 cc Pit bikes from DHZ MINI MOTO & DIRT MAX AUSTRALIA, but don’t forget the huge amount of runner up prizes including products from, Draggin jeans, Dirt Action Mag, UNIT riders, Ballard’s off road, Sponsorpoint, Sunny corner trail rides, Arquin, Sweet FX Bodyart, add to this official merchandise DVD’s and clothing products.
• Mark Stephenson from Dapto NSW won the Dirt Max Pro 150cc.
• John Shea all the way from Victoria won the DHZ 150cc Pit machine.
From the prize give away the events continued with the Red Bull FMX Competition finals starting, due to windy condition’s only the brave riders battled the conditions. With Chuck Norris edging out Robbie Adelberg for the Gold. Followed cloely by Chad Towers, Louis Balfour, James Grouse, Ryan Apps to round out the top 6. The windy conditions caused other riders not able to compete but some made the most of it and joined in to be judges and commentators. A big thanks to Steve Sommerfeld, Joel Rayner and Joe Shepphard.
The Hogs Breath Cafe’s Supermoto was a great battle between Cru Halliday and current Dual Australian Champion Angus Reekie, with Luke Richards, Alex Gobert, Graham Cheney, Linden Magee Stuart Bennett and Garry Kasch all in hot pursuit. Halliday and Reekie were in a massive dual all race up to lap 8 where Reekie made a costly mistake, which cost him the podium for Supermoto and the Iron man Champion on the day. Halliday took the win on the Hogs Yamaha followed by a great ride from 20-20 sport moto’s Luke Richards and a consistant ride from Alex Gobert rounded out the podium, with Stuart Bennett and Garry Kasch taking 4th and 5th respectively.
This not only was a great result for Gobert in the Supermoto, with the 3 consistant results from his Pit bike and Moto-X ride Gobert and Angus Reekie tied on 59 points each. After a count back it was Gobert who took the Gold and Iron Man for the 2008 Western QBE Moto Mayhem.
After some delay’s the Blackmarket films Stunt Feature stunt riders torn up the tarmac, with some awesome displays of skills, Bender being the Draggin Jean’s stoppie champ as usual.
Expression session was the following top 5.
1st 83 Sam Bennett (Sammo – CUNNINGSTUNTS)
2nd 81 Corey Solemons (OOO – OOO Freestyle)
3rd 79 Troy Andersen (Troy – FUF)
4th 73.5 Keyworth Nock (Bender – CUNNINGSTUNTS)
5th 61 Moe Ibrahim (Moe – FUF)
The Arquin scooter demonstration went down well with the riders and onlookers, keen to see how the Scooter racing may soon fit into the race schedule at Supermoto events. With Dale Corser from Arquin having a ride and delighted with the response on the day, Arquin being the motorcycle supplier for the officials of the Western QBE Moto Mayhem, even our Western QBE representative the lovely Jacinta Siracusa brought along her gear to test out the Arquin Scooters in the demonstration on the Oran Park North circuit.
“A huge thankyou goes out to the Central Coast Dirt riders mcc for their amazing work at the Moto-X circuit and to all the helper’s and volunteers to help make this event a great day. The warmer condition’s had our guy’s working hard to control Dust condition’s and keep to schedule at the same time, with so many events going on this is alway’s going to be tough. We like to thank all the riders and sponsors who supported the event and we hope that the industry can see the potential of this style event, so we can get better support to make this event bigger and better for years to come.” Stated ASM promoter Mark Avard.
“The footage captured from the event for Television and the Dirt Action Cover mount DVD is awesome and our editing crew will have a small preview ready late this week. Our production company will find it hard to fit so much good footage into just 1 x 1-hour program. So we are going to pitch a longer program for the event and this will be announced shortly once it is approved.” Television Producer Robert McKenzie TVF Production’s.
