National Series Round 4 - Shepparton, Vic 20 March 2011

The fourth and final round of the 2010/11 National Series was held in Shepparton on the weekend of 18-20 March 2011. With Thomas still out because of his broken arm, Dad and Andrew headed to Shepp on the Thursday afternoon, driving to Albury to stay overnight and then to Shepp on the Friday morning. Thomas ended up going to Sydney to see his girlfriend for the weekend so he wasn't overly distraught.

Dad and Andrew arrived at the track Friday morning, set up the tent and headed up the track to check it out and get in some practice. There were a few changes to the track from the one we used last year with lots of jumps put in, which Andrew looooves! Andrew was happy with his first day of practice, enjoying the track a lot more than last year.

Saturday was an early start with practice starting at 8am. Another good morning of practice and then Andrew headed to the pool with Brent while Dad went back to the motel to do some washing and bike maintenance before heading back to the track to watch Group A seeding. That over with, back to the motel, dinner and an early night in prep for race day tomorrow. Dad reckons Andrew was looking really fast in practice and nailing all of the jumps, which a lot of other riders couldn't master.

Sunday saw another early start with practice from 8am and racing starting at 10:30. As there was a pretty small field in Group B, racing was over with pretty quickly. Mum rang Dad at 11am "What's Andrews start time?" Dad: "They've just finished". As I had the internet open on the laptop, I went to the online results site and there it was in black and white, Andrew had smoked it woohoo, winning by another huge margin of over 12 seconds. It ended up that Andrew time of 2:20.10 would have seen him place 2nd in U17's and 8th in U19's. Bloody amazing effort mate. Thomas had want to hurry up and make a come back or Andrew might just beat him lol (I won't be coming home that day).

With the Series now over, Andrew made a clean sweep by winning all 4 rounds so has now earned the title "2010/11 U15 National Series Champion". Even though Thomas only raced 3 out of 4 rounds, having won all 3, he still had enough points to place 2nd overall in the Series in the U17's division, which is a fantastic effort. Till next time. Go Team!!!