In the fickle world of motorsport, you're only as good as your last race and Taupo superbike rider Scott Moir knows that for sure.
In the course of just two weeks the 33-year-old went from the high of winning the popular three-race Suzuki Series to a crash and mechanical failure in the first round of the 2018 New Zealand Superbike Championships.
Moir is philosophical about his less-than-perfect start to the Superbike champs but he's still savouring the sweet taste of success from the Suzuki Series, a competition he's come agonisingly close to winning on more than one previous occasion.
The manager of ProMoto Taupo has been competing in the Suzuki Series for five years and this is the first year he's been able to secure the win after wrapping up the three-round series at Whanganui's Cemetery Circuit on Boxing Day. That followed victories at Taupo and Manfeild in the previous weeks.
To top it off, Moir also won the Robert Holden feature race at Whanganui, which had the 30-fastest bikes across the series' various classes competing against each other, and he was only a one-hundredth of a second off setting a new course record.
"It's a pretty big thing to win when it's got Whanganui in it," says Moir. "It gets a big crowd and gets on TV and everyone knows about Whanganui."
Scott Moir is philosophical about his less-than-perfect start to the Superbike champs. Photo/Duncan Mackintosh
The Taupo and Manfeild events were around eight laps of the course, with each lap taking about 90 seconds, but the Whanganui circuit is shorter, about 50 seconds. The races are short — about 10 to 15 minutes — but intense.
Moir says the shortness of the Whanganui circuit makes it "quite hard and demanding".
"It's stop-start. It's like gas, brake, gas, brake, it's quite hard for a slow speed track. I might do 180km/h at Whanganui and at Taupo you might get to 270km/h down the back straight."
Winning the Suzuki Series meant a bonus from Suzuki, a swag of trophies and the satisfaction of a goal achieved.
"I'm pretty happy. It was a bit of a weight off my shoulders because there was a bit of pressure going into Whanganui having a seven-point lead which isn't a hell of a lot because one slip and it's over. So I pushed to win the first race in Whanganui and then I knew the second race I didn't have to go quite as hard, and I got second in that because I knew I didn't have to win.
"And then the last race is the feature race with no points on the line because it's just an all-out race and if you crash it doesn't affect your overall standing so I was just like 'give it to that one' and I won that with a two or three second lead."
Moir's bike, a Suzuki GSX-R 1000, is a brand new model which Suzuki provided him with this year. He's a bike mechanic, so he does the work on his bike himself. Fitting everything in during the Superbike season can be a challenge but he has the support of fiancee Diane Rudkin and son Max, nearly 2, as well as sponsors Carl van der Meer Builders, who help him with his running costs and equipment.
The Superbike champs were looking promising but in the first round at Christchurch the practice day was cancelled and although Moir came fourth in the first race he crashed in the second while battling for the lead then had mechanical difficulties in the third.
He says that's just the nature of super bike racing.
"Everyone was 'you've got a good chance going into Christchurch after your win' and I was like 'anything can happen, you're only as good as your last race'."
As well as the next two rounds of the Superbike champs, Moir will compete at Paeroa's Battle of the Streets on February 18.
