Motorsport: Whangārei racer Duncan Coutts starts season in winning style

Whangārei motorcycle racer, Duncan Coutts, is off to a winning start for the summer season.

Coutts competed at the Greymouth Street Races two weeks ago and managed to win all three of his races in the Pre 89 class, an event for bikes manufactured before 1989.

He followed that up with wins in all his races at the Spring Classic at Manfeild raceway in Feilding last weekend."I hadn't raced at Greymouth before but street races are my favourite form and the course was a lot of fun," Coutts said.

"It's a tight course through the middle of the central shopping area. There are lots of off-camber roads and while you're only using a couple of gears, there are plenty of places to get yourself in trouble."

His bike is an XR 69 Harris replica powered by a heavily modified Yamaha FJ 1200 engine. Modern wheels are permitted, as is the use of race fuel.

And in a nod to Whangārei, Coutts' bike features a distinctive Hundertwasser themed paint job, and he's hoping his promising start to the season will continue after the disappointment of last season.

"I first raced the bike a year ago but we had a lot of trouble with camshaft wear and so the season ended up being a series of failures," he said.

"This is the only bike like this being raced in New Zealand so it's taken a bit of sorting. We now have a lot more oil going to the top of the engine and it seems to be working well."

The racing at Manfeild was held in challenging conditions with showers coming across the track on the Saturday. Sunday saw the track dry out and the lap times come down.

Coutts will next race at the Southern Classic at Levels Raceway, Timaru, on December 1.

"The Southern Classic is always a hotly contested meeting," said Coutts.

"There's some fast Aussies come over and the boys from the deep south are no slugs. It's a tight track which doesn't suit our bigger bikes but it does make for super close racing."

The Suzuki Series follows in December and Coutts will then crate his bike and send it to Australia with some fellow kiwis to take part in the Phillip Island International Classic meeting in Melbourne, in January.