Parker’s tribute race repeat; Rees out in style
Whakatane’s Damon Rees may be comfortably leading the glamour superbikes class, but still he won’t win the national title.
The 24-year-old was again in scintillating form, almost mirroring the outstanding results he achieved at the first round of five in this year’s New Zealand Superbike Championships, in Christchurch, last week when he scored an impressive hat-trick of wins at round two at Levels International Raceway at the weekend.
Rees also smashed the superbike lap record at Levels in his first race on Saturday, setting a blistering time of one minute 2.529 seconds.
However, that was also his farewell performance at home and he shortly heads off to tackle the British Superstock 1000 championships, therefore committed overseas while the Kiwi domestic series continues on without him, the latter three rounds of the championships set for the North
Island in March and April.
With Rees gone, it means the scrap for the 2020 superbike class crown could be a real dogfight, with just 33 points to separate the next four riders in the standings after round two, Christchurch’s Alastair Hoogenboezem, Australian visitor Lachlan Epis, Rangiora’s Jake Lewis and Taupo’s Scott Moir.
Other class leaders after the weekend’s racing at Timaru are Whanganui’s Richie Dibben (Supersport 600); Whangarei’s Jason Hearn (Supersport 300, provisional); Whangaparoa’s Nathan Jane (650 Pro Twins); Taupo’s Andy Scrivener and Tina McKeown (Sidecars); Invercargill’s Cormac Buchanan (Supersport 150) and Nelson’s Tyrone Kuipers (GIXXER Cup 150).
Meanwhile, Timaru’s Harry Parker repeated his Allan Ramage Memorial Trophy success from 2019 by winning the special tribute event for a second time yesterday.
Parker took the memorial race honours ahead of Auckland’s Nathanael Diprose and Hamilton’s Jacob Stroud by scoring 2-1-2 results in the separate series of three quick-fire, three-lap races that wound up the weekend. The threesome shared the race wins – Diprose finished 3-2-1 in the three memorial races, while Stroud finished 1-4-4.
Entries for the Allan Ramage Memorial races were by invitation only, comprising the fastest 12 qualifiers from the Supersport 300cc class.
Motorcycling New Zealand road-race co-commissioner Grant Ramage said it was ‘‘an absolutely awesome weekend of racing’’.
‘‘The conditions were perfect . . . the track surface was good and there were no dramas.’’