News 18 Nov 2010

Oz RR: FX Superbike Championship reduced to single round

The 2010 Australasian FX Superbike Championship will be contested over just one round after it was today revealed that the Eastern Creek and Winton rounds have been dropped from the series calendar.

Kevin Curtain is the current Australian Formula Xtreme Champion. Image: Keith Muir.

Kevin Curtain is the current Australian Formula Xtreme Champion. Image: Keith Muir.

The 2010 Australasian FX Superbike Championship will be contested over just one round after it was today revealed that the Eastern Creek and Wakefield Park rounds have been dropped from the series calendar.

MotoOnline.com.au broke the news earlier today that the series was in jeopardy, with confirmation coming this afternoon that Australian Road and Track Rider Promotions has officially opted to focus on the ‘Winton Extravaganza’.

The Winton event was scheduled to be the season finale of the AFXSBK series on 17-18 December, however it will now mark the lone round on the schedule alongside the inaugural Australasian FX Motocross Championship.

“After a very successful inaugural Australian Formula Xtreme Championship this year Australian Road and Track Rider Promotions has been looking forward to running the upcoming December Summer Series,” a statement from series manager Terry O’Neill said.

“In the last few days after being in direct contact with the majority of the competitors who have competed in this year’s winter series one thing has become pretty clear and that is since our final Eastern Creek AFX Championship round of the year the majority of racers were not in a financial position to compete in a three round series at this time.”

The decision to cancel the three-round series came yesterday afternoon according to O’Neill, the ARTRP collectively deciding to focus on the Winton event to round out what has been a successful year to date for the Formula Xtreme series.

“While it is with a great deal of disappointment that we have had to go down this path at this time, we have established that the Summer Series concept is a great idea and that we will evolve further over time,” O’Neill added.

With the road race event set to take place on Saturday, O’Neill commented that there has been interest from selected competitors in racing both the FX Superbike Championship and the FX Motocross Championship, set to be contested on Sunday. Juniors will compete on Saturday in the FX Motocross ranks.

It has also been confirmed that the single round event will still be televised on SBS Speedweeek, as well as on FOXTEL’s new SPEED channel.

Originally, the Australasian FX Superbike Championship was scheduled to be contested over three rounds spanning the first three weeks of December, however the first official sign of concern came this morning when Eastern Creek Ride Days announced that it had secured two extra dates at Eastern Creek – the dates of the AFXSBK opener at Eastern Creek.

The announcement also means that The Bel-Ray 6 Hour scheduled for Phillip Island in Victoria on 3-5 December won’t have any date clashes with competing national road racing events.

With the dates for the 2011 FX Summer Series already locked in again on consecutive weekends in December, O’Neill told MotoOnline.com.au that “at this stage nothing has changed for 2011”, although there is a possibility of an expanded calender for combined road race/motocross events.

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