Young Victorian Joe Harvey, who has been a regular runner in the Under 19's championship at the Nokia MX Nationals has made a bit of a detour and headed to Britain for some Supermoto racing where he is campaigning the Stratton Motorsports Aprilia SXV550.
Harvey competed as the third round of the British Supermoto at Lydden Hill on the 1st July 2007. The Lydden Hill circuit is set on a hillside with fast straights and plenty of dirt, there were 3 dirt sections which was easily the most that that Joe had ridden at any circuit. The fast nature of the road sections and technical dirt sections created a challenging circuit.
With the weather as unpredictable as Melbourne at it's best his crew ended up changed tyres several times during the day and even ended up with wet tyres in the last sunniest race of the day.
Harvey managed to improve both his position and lap times during the weekend. He qualified 26th of 27 on Saturday and finished 22nd, 21st and finally 19th , his lap times dropping from 1m 17secs on Saturday to 1m 11 on destroyed wets.
"I spent most of Saturday's practise/ qualifying sessions familiarising myself with the new machine and didn't get much time to put in some hard laps, but after I had become comfortable on the bike I began to feel confident on the mighty 550," Harvey told fullnoise. "When the time came to qualify for Sunday's race the heavens opened and I was once again put in unfamiliar territory, so I wobbled round the flooded circuit to qualify in 26th place.
"On Sunday the weather took a turn for the better which put a smile on many a racer's face, I was keen to improve my results and felt that I would be able to do this a lot better on a dry track.
"In race one I got a reasonable start and was able to move up a few spots as I avoided some first lap turmoil. I stayed in a similar position for most of the race and felt that I had learnt a lot about the bike in race conditions.
I finished in 23rd place and was keener to do better in race 2.
Race 2 didn't start as well as I would have hoped, I was fine in the first turn and then passed a large amount of riders in turn 2 but came unstuck in turn 3 as I tried to go round a pack of fallen riders, I was collected by another rider with the same intention. I remounted and struggled to catch any other riders but managed to make up a few places from riders who had come to grief in some way. I finished in 21st place and thought that I could do much better if everything went to plan.
"The final race of the day happened to be my best race as I got a reasonable start, didn't crash on the first lap, and had some other riders to battle with. I was riding on a wet weather rear tyre in the dry because I was sharing the bike with team manager Shane Stratton and we didn't have time to change tyres as the races were back to back. So as I slid my way round the circuit I also posted my best time of the weekend which showed how much I had improved over the course of meeting. I finished the race in 19th position which was my best result," Harvey ended.
Next Friday Harvey will test at the Teeside circuit near Middlesbrough so at the British Supermoto R4 there the following weekend he will have had some miles both on the unfamiliar bike but also at the track.
