Bay of Plenty’s Josiah Natzke managed a solid start to his Maxxis British Motocross Championships campaign at the weekend. Photo by Andy McGechan, BikesportNZ.com

It was a solid MX2 class performance at the Maxxis British Motocross Championships from Kiwi hero Josiah Natzke at Culham at the weekend, although the day did belong to Grand Prix star Conrad Mewse.

British rider Mewse was unbeaten in the MX2 class, posting a 1-1 score-card to begin the series.

He was just too strong for the competition and will now head to Italy next weekend for another crack at Latvia’s Pauls Jonass, Spain’s Jorge Prado and Denmark’s Thomas-Kjer Olsen in the MX2 world championships.

Second overall in the MX2 class at the British champs round was Joshua Gilbert with a 2-2 score-card and third was Mel Pocock with 3-4 scores.

Bay of Plenty man Natzke managed 10th and 5th in the two races, good enough for seventh overall on the day.

Natzke was still feeling the effects of a huge crash seven days earlier and after starting his opening race near the front suffered arm-pump which caused him to slip down the order to 10th. The 19-year-old then holeshot moto two and led for three laps before, clearly in considerable discomfort, fading back to fifth.

“In the first moto I got bad arm-pump and that really messed me up – I got a good start so that was disappointing – but in the second moto I holeshot,” he said. “My back was very uncomfortable but I did what I could to score as many points as possible.

“It’s a long season so I just did what I could with what I had. I haven’t ridden all week and I’ve been pretty stiff – it sort of settled down but now that I’ve pushed it a bit I’m quite sore.”

Meanwhile, in the MX1 class, Graeme Irwin won the day with 1-3 results, leading home Russian rider Evgeny Bobryshev, who scored 4-1 results, and Britain’s Jake Nicholls, who went 2-4.

The next round of the Maxxis British Championship is at Canada Heights on April 22.

© Photo by Andy McGechan, www.BikesportNZ.com

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