Apprenticeship Continues For Hard Charging Shackleton – ProMX Maitland
The steep learning curve for 14 year old BCP Factory Honda Junior Development Team rider Seth Shackleton continued over the weekend at Maitland’s Round 4 of the Pro MX Championship.
On a hard pack and rutty circuit the Western Australian found himself charging hard but out of his comfort zone early in the weekend while struggling to flow through the long and ever changing ruts!
“We’ve been working so hard on our ruts but unfortunately there’s nothing you can find mid week to train on that even comes close to resembling these kind of ruts that we get at Pro MX,” commented Shackleton.
Combined with some average starts over the weekend’s three points scoring motos, Shackleton played catch up in all three motos coming from outside of the top 20 in each race. Saturday’s moto 1 saw the red rider put on his hardest charge of the weekend coming from 30th up to an impressive 11th place.
“I made life hard for myself in moto 1 with a bad start and tried so hard for the first half of the race to get some momentum going,” said Shackleton.
“Finally in the last 10 minutes I started to feel comfortable and made some important moves before the finish of the race.”
Moto 2 was basically a replica of moto 1 with a similar charge from the back of the pack, this time finishing 12th position!
The skies opened up for the final MX3 moto of the day with a storm passing through that would transform the track from perfect conditions to slippery hard pack that turned the race on its head.
“I felt like a had a good charge going in the final moto and was making my way back through the pack when the rain hit and I found myself on the ground with a low side crash that would put me out of the points.”
Shackleton would end up 15th overall for the day and currently sits 13th overall in the MX3 points chase after 4 rounds.
“It’s all starting to come together for Seth and already at this early stage of the season we can see signs of that first break through ride,” said Team Manager Lee Hogan.
“We had our starts dialled at Wodonga and I feel that if we had those starts this weekend we could have been well up there into the top 10 on a track that Seth really struggled to feel comfortable on. It was great having Jy Roberts along for the day to assist the team and we look forward now to gearing up for Round 5 at Gillman in South Australia.”
Round 5 of the Pro MX series will be held at the iconic Gillman circuit in metropolital Adelaide on Sunday 28th May!