Rotorua’s John Phillips had plenty to smile about when dust cleared at the end of racing at round four of the British Masters Motocross Championships at Fox Hills at the weekend.

The Bay of Plenty hero, a key member of the Kiwi DBG Race Team, managed 10th and 15th placings among a talent-packed field of international riders.

“During qualifying, I got out and did a couple slow laps to try and learn the track a bit better and get a few lines,” he explained.

“Then I put in a couple a couple fast laps for qualifying but, as it turned out, the timing system was down, so I worked on getting really well warmed up.

“In race one, I didn’t get a very good start but I pushed my way through on the first corner and found myself in the top half of the field, I kept pushing hard for the first couple laps and got up to 13th, by that time I had got really bad arm pump and I wasn’t in a very good flow, I managed to get up to 10th and hold it for the rest of the race, almost getting 9th on the last lap.

“For race two, I got off to another ordinary start and again I had to push through the field.

“I had forced my way up to around 14th by lap four when I got cross-rutted and went down, dropping back to around 25th place. From there I chipped away at getting past riders for the rest of the race and managed to catch up to 14th, but ran out of race to get past and had to settle for 15th.

“I was really happy with my fitness and I rode a lot better as the day wore on. My starts let me down a lot but I’ll get them sorted this week.”

© Photo by Stefan Paetow, eons netmedia