Start or no start?

I was part of the PCRA Australian team that travelled to New Zealand to take on the Kiwis for round 2 of this year’s Trans Tasman Challenge on 24-26 October. As your readers would know, we host them in March of every year at Eastern Creek, and they return the hospitality at Hampton Downs Raceway in October. We had 21 solo riders, and 6 sidecars this year make the trek. Having crated our bikes, got them in the container, contributed to the cost of shipping the bikes over, spent our money for flights, accommodation and food, imagine our surprise upon arrival at the circuit to be told that we could not compete due to the lack of ‘start permissions’ from MA not being received by the Clerk of Course!

Investigations revealed that whilst we all had paid our AON Insurance to allow us to ride overseas under MA regulations some weeks earlier, MA had failed to follow through and advise the NZ organisers as required. This is our 5th year at doing this so I can tell you there were some pretty pi**ed off riders around the place. Fortunately the New Zealand guys are pretty keen racers, and so a compromise was reached, and the Clerk of the Course came up with some creative solutions to enable us all to run anyway. We all enjoy the annual Kiwi trip so it would kinda be nice if MA laid out the rules so we all understand exactly what’s required and this sort of thing does not happen again. By the way.. we thrashed ‘em.. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Silverware ours once again! Ian Morrison Brisbane, Qld.