A new multi-discipline motorcycle racing team was launched against the backdrop of heritage aircraft at Mt Maunganui’s Classic Flyers museum last Saturday evening.
The new MC2 Racing squad will run the official Suzuki New Zealand motocross effort in major New Zealand motocross events and also has brought front-running road racing and drag racing teams under its umbrella.
The team has been set up by Andrew Hardisty, director of Mt Maunganui’s Moto City Suzuki dealership and a former national motocross champion and top road racer.
Moto City has run the Suzuki motocross effort for the past five years but MC2 Racing is a new company with its own race workshop.
“We wanted to establish a separate entity for racing and create some new marketing opportunities as well as expanding into other areas of the sport,” Hardisty said.
“We have some exciting developments coming including a new website, a presence with Suzuki at Big Boy’s Toys in Auckland and the riders will be doing some school visits and motivational talks.”
MC2 team manger Andrew Hardisty (left) with Suzuki MX1 rider Brad Groombridge. Photo / GREG HENDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY
The MC2 motocross effort for 2015-16 will focus on the premiere MX1 class with two Suzuki RM-Z450 machines. Taupo’s Brad Groombridge will again spearhead the Suzuki effort and the team has sprung a surprise by signing Argentine racer Joaquin Fernandez.
Groombridge, 25, finished fifth in the 2015 MX1 Championship and will get his 2015-16 season underway at Taupo’s Labour weekend MX Fest event. He’ been preparing for his summer campaign with a regime of cycling and some extreme enduro events.
Fernandez, 28, is from Cordoba and has been in New Zealand for four months basing himself in Rotorua. A former professional racer in South America, he has raced throughout Argentina and Chile and was one of the local wildcard riders at Argentina’s MXGP world championship event earlier this year.
A broken collarbone has put a Labour weekend Kiwi debut in doubt for Fernandez.
The MC2 road racing effort will see Wellington-based Sloan Frost riding a Suzuki GSX-R1000.
Frost finished third in the 2015 New Zealand Superbike Championship — the third time he has claimed third place — and he plans to contest the Suzuki International Series during December as well as the NZ Superbike Champs and the Paeroa street race event in February.
Before the Suzuki series gets underway Frost also has a guest outing during the Highlands 101 GT car race meeting in an attempt to set a lap two-wheel record for the Highlands Park circuit near Cromwell.
The quarter-mile element of the programme brings the two Suzuki drag bikes of Mt Maunganui’s Spike Allen into the MC2 team.
Allen will race his BB/DB (under 1000cc) category Suzuki GSX-R1000 turbocharged machine which last summer set a national record at 8.052s/165.97mph. Allen is targeting a step into the 7secs bracket this summer.
On the 700-horsepower Pro Street 1300cc turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa will be Aucklander Dean Veale, also a multiple national record holder in Competition and Modified bike classes.
The MC2 drag racing effort for 2015-16 begins at Meremere Dragway over the October 31 and November 1 weekend.