The chance to compete for national motorsport honours comes to Tauranga next year with Motorsport BOP securing the hosting rights to the 2013 Motorsport New Zealand Club Sport Championship.
It includes motorkhana, autocross and bent sprint events and will be held at Baypark on the first weekend of March.
The Club Sport Championship provides grass roots motorsport competition suitable for standard production cars with overall titles plus categories for junior (from age 12) drivers and three-car teams representing car clubs.
The two-day event will include a motorkhana driving skills event comprising six tests, and an autocross in the speedway pit area and surrounding car parks on Saturday March 2. A bent sprint will use the speedway oval on Sunday, March 3.
This year's Club Sport Champs were held in Southland, with Brent Reddington driving a Honda City winning all three disciplines and the overall title.
Upcoming MBOP events include the annual double-header Hillclimb Challenge with the tarmac event on September 30 at Te Puke Quarry Rd and the gravel follow-up at Harray Rd near Te Puke on October 7.
Urwin in top 10
Tauranga paraplegic kart racer Niki Urwin showed strong pace but came away with only a top-10 finish at the Australian Rotax Nationals last weekend.
Racing at Lincoln County Raceway in Dubbo, New South Wales, saw Urwin top the opening qualifying session for the Rotax DD2 Masters class and then post a second, first and a non-finish in the three heat races.
He was third in the pre-final, earning him a second row starting position for the 24-lap main event. But a second lap coming-together with Australian driver Scott Connole bumped Urwin back to 16th position before he showed his pace again and regained 10th place in the closing laps.
Eight New Zealand drivers were among the 160 entries at the Dubbo event, with 18-year-old Aucklander Daniel Kinsman achieving the best result, with third in the 125cc Rotax Max Light final.
Back to normal
Racing at the Bay of Plenty Kart Club's Fagans Valley Raceway returns to the normal clockwise track set-up on Sunday for completion of 2012's club champs.
The first round was completed in August with the five-heat format and anti-clockwise racing mostly staged in tricky wet weather conditions. Adam Bell (Cadets), Josh Adlam (Formula Junior) and Corey Green (Yamaha Lights) were among the drivers to gain the lead in their respective classes. Fagans Valley Raceway is at Alley Rd, Te Puke.
Lamont featured
The new Central Motocross Series is now half completed with the second round at Tokoroa on Sunday headlined by the appearance of newly crowned Australian Under-19 Development Class champion Kayne Lamont.
The Mangakino teenager - who is set to team with Motueka's Josh Coppins and Papamoa's Cody Cooper in New Zealand's Motocross of Nations team in Belgium at the end of September - finished second twice in a combined MX1 and MX2 field behind Whakatane's Mitchell Rees (Honda) and Cambridge rider Campbell Bailey (Yamaha), and then headed the bigger bikes to win the third moto.
Lamont took the MX2 honours for the day ahead of Rotorua's Cameron Vaughan (Yamaha) while Bailey continued to recover from an injury earlier this year and was the MX1 winner ahead of North Shore's James Ainsworth (Honda).
Round three of the series is at the Rotorua Motorcycle Club's Horohoro track on October 7, with the final back at Tokoroa on November 4.
Paddock run
The Tauranga Motorcycle Club has a maize paddock fun day this Sunday at 751 Welcome Bay Rd.
Sign-on is from 8.30am with the rider's briefing at 9.45am and the track opens at 10am with mini, junior and senior riders in action.
Meanwhile plans to open the club's new 7.5km trail loop in the TECT All Terrain Park at Pyes Pa - which have been delayed by wet weather on two occasions - will now be rescheduled in November.