A Riverside-based motorcycle team has broken a two-decade-long Tasmanian road racing drought.
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B-Spoke Design rider Taran Ocean, of Hobart, earlier this month claimed the first non-historic Australian road racing championship title by a Tasmanian since 1997, when Simon Weeks won the 250 championship and Mat Turner won the 250 production championship.
Tasmanian riders have claimed a good share of historic trophies since the introduction of that competition about 30 years ago.
Ocean won the 125GP class at Phillip Island, after switching from a 600cc four cylinder four stroke a couple of years ago, and teammate Scott Topping, of WA, was runner-up.
But the team’s success didn’t end there.
Hobart rider Jeremy Huddlestone, who joined the team for the penultimate round in Sydney, claimed third place for the Phillip Island round and was just 1.5 points off second.
“I really couldn’t believe how the whole series ended up,” Ocean said.
“The bikes have run beautifully for the entire series. I started off by crashing a lot and breaking lots of stuff, but Jeremy calmed me down and I had a great final round.
“It was awesome to actually spend time on the track during qualifying rather than changing bits on the bike.”
Ocean said that he had practised at home on a MotoGP video game and was amazed to find how similar everything was in real life.
The team’s dominance on the track belied its humble base, as B-Spoke’s Nathaniel Greene explained.
“The team that dad (Mike Greene) and I built in our shed, with a tiny budget, managed to win seven of the nine races, set fastest laps at every round and qualified on pole for every race,” a delighted Greene said.
“The magnitude of these achievements only started to sink in on the plane home, and we could not be more proud of everyone in the B-Spoke family.
“Road racing is a team sport and our team has grown as the year has gone on – their support with tyres, fuel, parts, coaching and accommodation has been critical. But we really need some sponsors to come on board to allow us to run a team next year _ please get in touch via Facebook if you feel you can help make this a reality.”