As a former World Motocross GP winner and regular front-runner in Australian Motocross, Scotsman Billy Mackenzie has also proven he has what it takes within stadiums too, contending for the Monster Energy Super X, Australasian Supercross Championship.

Riding for Monster Energy Kawasaki full time in Australia for the past two seasons, the 27-year-old kicked off the 2011 Super X season with a second place finish at the season opener in Melbourne on Saturday night, 22 October.

The result maintained Mackenzie’s perfect podium record in Super X after joining the series for the final two rounds last year coming off an injury, scoring the runner-up position in each and every main event he’s contested.

Monster Energy caught up with him to speak about the opening round, his second place streak, and also to find out how he’s enjoying the competition down under.

Round one of Super X is in the books, a mud race unfortunately, but most importantly you continued your podium run and scored good points…

Yeah, it was my third supercross and third second place that I’ve got. It’s about time that I stepped onto that top box. I’ve had a couple of mud races, so I need to get back on a dry track and prove that I can actually ride supercross in the dry. I proved it in Sydney last year, but I’ve been practicing a lot and I want to show I can ride supercross.

The bike is working awesome, such an improvement, and it got me out of the gate so well in the conditions. That’s half the battle. It was a lottery out there tonight and the mud played a factor, but I kept it upright as long as I could before I crashed.

It was frustrating to crash when I was leading, but I kept it together after that and got a second place. Everybody says you can’t win a championship in the first round, but you can definitely lose it, so those points are good for the championship.

As you said, you crashed while you were leading, but what goes through your mind in those conditions? Do you ride your own race or gauge where you’re at as well?

Well, I think what happened tonight was that I led a few laps, gained a little advantage over Tye Simmonds and thought to myself, “hey, you can win this”. The next corner I fell off [laughs]!

The thoughts that go through our heads racing are so random sometimes, but the normal ones are to focus on the lines. For instance, out there tonight I was just concentrating on standing up as much as I could.

I was trying to pick my lines and not get on the gas too early, because it was really slick and slippery. You take each race at a time, but the championship is definitely in the back of your mind.

You’ve won GPs and have shown you’re quick anywhere in the world when it comes to motocross, but supercross is relatively new for you. Is this just as much a learning experience for you as we’d expect it to be?

Yeah, like I’ve said in a couple of interviews before, I still don’t feel like I’ve proved myself as a supercross rider. I’d rather not take on that stamp, because I’d like to stay the underdog and just try my best.

That kind of works for me, because I don’t like to come into races saying that I’m going to win. I think it’d be nice to win, but at the moment I need to take every race as an experience because I have a lot to learn at the moment in supercross.

My Monster Energy Kawasaki’s getting me out of the gate and that’s the best position to be in to learn. I’m just going to keep trying my best and see what happens.

Just finally, you’re a regular over here in Australia, but come from a GP background in Europe. Is Monster Energy Super X a good platform for riders who are looking to race in the U.S. in the future?

100 percent, it is. That’s half the reason I chose to come and race in Australia, because I saw there’s a good series and it just looked like a good place to learn, rather than jumping straight into the AMA. I didn’t feel confident to do that.

I sussed it all out, saw that Australia has a series that’s really growing, and it’s good to grow with it as a rider. For young Australians it’s given them the best possible breeding ground for supercross, which is a good platform for the American series.

We don’t have supercross in the UK and I couldn’t go from there straight to the AMA – I don’t think I’d really want to. It’s good to get experience here in Australia because the tracks are built really well, plus the riders are also strong. It’s just up to me to step up to the pace.

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