I only had a 14-point lead going into the final round of this year’s MX Nationals Australian Motocross Championship after getting second in both motos at Lakes behind my Rockstar CDR Yamaha teammate Cheyne Boyd, so I knew that Coolum was going to be a tough round heading into it.

Boydy is good at Coolum, but I knew I had to ride the round on my terms, and I was able to do that. I qualified first on Saturday and then came out on Sunday to be quickest in the warm-up.

That made me confident heading into race one and I picked a good gate, got the holeshot, and pretty much lead from start to finish. Going into the second and third races I still hadn’t wrapped it up, and I finished second to Boydy in the second leg too.

Going into that last race I said to myself that if I got the holeshot I was going to go for it, which I did, and it was great to lead that whole last race from start to finish on my way to wrapping it up. It was a perfect finish and one of the best days of racing in my whole life.

I got the championship won and it was a lot of stress and weight off of my shoulders, so to win it was unreal. It was a hard series because of a lot of off-track stuff going on, so it meant a lot to me and my family, so it’s definitely made me confident heading into supercross and I feel really good about it.

Since the motocross I’ve had a bit of time off and one of my best mates, Danny Apro, got married up in Queensland to my cousin Courtney, so I had the week off up there and just chilled out after the race.

After that I had a week at home just hanging at my house, having fun, got some tyres on my car and hung out with my mates, just doing a heap of fun stuff to keep me busy.

But now it’s back to training for supercross, just looking for tracks to ride at the moment. Even on Sunday we travelled six hours just to go practicing and then came home again. It’s been hard without a track for ourselves, but Ryan and I have been working hard and I think we start testing next week.

Last year I was happy with the way I ended the Super X series, and a mud race was going to be the one we’d do it if anybody could beat Chad, so being muddy last year at Townsville I took the opportunity to win on a night where Chad had a lot to lose. The week later at the final round he proved once again what a good rider he is in supercross and won again in all three races, but I was a lot happier with how I was riding.

This year I want to start up from where I left off last year and looking at the formats, there are no 20 lap races this year. They’re all short and sharp races, so I just want to push Chad into an error.

He’s done a lot of racing this year so he’s probably got some errors in him, so I just want to try and get some holeshots and try to beat him in those sprint races, at least putting more pressure on him. Last year he had a lot on us here in Australia, so if I can push to make a race of it and maybe even win a couple from him then I think we can be a lot closer in the championship.

I’ll check in again before Super X kicks off.

Jay