This year Taranaki hosted the 2022 Junior MX Nationals. This place has changed heaps since the last time I raced here. The start gates have moved, and the track has been reversed so the big step downs are now massive step ups. Day one was pretty hard mentally. The track broke down really fast and there were heaps of stops to racing due to bad crashes so we spent lots of time waiting around in the hot sun. My starts were great for all the races and I pushed myself as hard as I could go but my risks did not always pay off as I had a lot of crashes, mostly in the soft corners. It was a long emotional weekend and after 14-8-12-14-8 I ended up with 12NZ in 12-14 125. I’m disappointed with my overall result and I could have/should have done so much better however with only a couple of months on the bike I was expecting a lot of myself there were a lot of positives too. The next Juniors are in April 2023 in Invercargill so lots to do in not much time.
Soren Staudinger 