A LONG, HOT SUMMER | Bikesportnz

It is going to be another very hot summer for New Zealand’s motorcycle road racers.

The popular annual Suzuki Tri Series, followed by the five-round New Zealand Superbike Championships, will ensure that the engines keep screaming this coming season from early December right through until late March.

With sponsorship dollars for sports events harder to come by with each passing year, Tri Series organiser Alan ‘Flea’ Willacy said he was thrilled to announce that Suzuki New Zealand had again come to the party, confirming sponsorship of the series for the next two years.

The iconic Boxing Day street race event in Wanganui is again the third and final round of that Suzuki Tri Series competition. This year will also be the 60th running of the legendary Cemetery Circuit race.

“It’s fantastic to have this support from Suzuki this year and in 2013 as well,” said Willacy.

The Cemetery Circuit event is one of New Zealand’s biggest bike races, an iconic event on the Kiwi race calendar, a spectacular one-day show that attracts many thousands of race fans each summer and also lures top-class motorcycle racers from throughout New Zealand and from overseas as well.

Suzuki rider Andrew Stroud made it four consecutive Tri Series outright wins when he wrapped up the superbike title again on Boxing Day last year.

The nine-time former national superbike champion from Hamilton finished runner-up at the 2011 series opener at Hampton Downs in December and snatched the points lead when he won the day at round two at Manfeild a week later.

He was beaten on the twisty streets of Wanganui’s fabled Cemetery Circuit on Boxing Day’s series finale – Yamaha’s Dan Stauffer again proving to be the hero that day – but that didn’t matter because Stroud had earlier accumulated enough points to rubber-stamp his “ownership” of the Suzuki Tri Series.

Stroud has won the superbike component of the series every year since the inaugural running in 2008 and will be hoping to extend that to a fifth title when the 2012 series kicks off this December.

For the New Zealand Superbike Championships that follow hard in the wheel tracks of the Tri Series, Stroud can again expect stiff competition from the likes of visiting Australian Robbie Bugden – who stole Stroud’s thunder and raced his way to Kiwi superbike title No.4 last summer – as well as riders such as Wellington’s Sloan Frost, Hamilton’s Nick Cole, Feilding’s Craig Shirriffs and Christchurch’s James Smith, to name just a few.

2012-2013 Suzuki Tri-Series:

Round one: Hampton Downs December 8;

Round two: Manfeild December 15;

Round three: Cemetery Circuit, Wanganui December 26

2013 New Zealand Superbike Championships:

Round one: Ruapuna January 5-6

Round two: Levels January 12-13

Round three: Teretonga January 19-20

Round four: Hampton Downs March 16-17

Round five: Taupo March 23-24

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