This time of the year is one of the best in motorcycle racing, as championships begin to wind down and, for the most part, go to the wire. While we all love the hype an opening round emits, the final three rounds of a championship is just as entertaining.

The Monster Energy MX Nationals will head to Raymond Terrace for round eight of 10 on Sunday and for Kirk Gibbs, this point of the season is critical. He’s currently 18 points behind defending champion Matt Moss and that gap has remained constant in recent rounds.

KTM Motocross Racing Team manager has said that for Gibbs, rounds eight and nine are where he needs to take over the lead of the MX1 title race if he’s to topple Moss come Coolum’s final round. And it’s a pretty accurate take, too.

“My feeling is that we need to make our move over the next two rounds, and the ideal would actually be going into Coolum with a lead,” Twyerould said. “It would be very hard to beat Mossy at Coolum, he rides that track very well and he’s prepared to ride at a level that will win the championship. So if he needs to finish sixth, he will do exactly that to win the championship.

“It think we really need to keep the pressure on him over the next two rounds at the hard pack tracks that we think he struggles a little bit on. Then fingers crossed we go into the final round with a little bit of a lead and really put the pressure on him.”

Whatever happens between the pair, it looks like it will go come down to Moss or Gibbs, but CDR Yamaha’s Craig Dack is yet to completely rule out Billy Mackenzie’s title hopes with three rounds remaining. Right now, he’s 68 points off Moss.

Dack said: “We never say never. We still have a fair way to go in the championship and there are still a huge amount of points up for grabs. It seems like though, between Matt Moss and Kirk Gibbs there is a really interesting battle. If those two don’t have any problems for the rest of the championship, they’re going to be hard to beat.

“But to say who is going to win out of those two, I recon you could toss a coin up. The championship is certainly not anywhere near over for us, but on current form we need to be performing better to be a part of that battle.”

In MX2 it’s a reasonably similar situation. Inconsistency has played a major role in this year’s title chase, but up front Luke Clout’s held strong on the Serco Yamaha YZ350F to hold down the lead. He’s 16 points ahead of current MXD champion Hamish Harwood, but the in-form Luke Arbon has snuck into the mix, now 43 points back.

Clout will be determined to win races over the coming rounds and basically has to if he’s to assert himself as the champ, however the big picture of the championship will come into play as well. None of these front men can afford any more bad races – they’ve all had them to date.

MXD is where we are really going to see the action heat up. Jed Beaton, also on a Yamaha four-stroke, leads by 10 after his class act at Conondale, but Jack Simpson, Egan Mastin and Nato Crawford are all within striking distance. On paper, this is going to be the best title race of all!

So there’s plenty of great racing to unfold, many stories to be told, and at the end of it all, we’re going to see three deserving champions crowned. That’s what racing’s all about.

And now over to Makker, who after a week (well, less than, actually) out of action is back for his take from up in Queensland. Welcome back, over to you mate…

I’m going to be honest. As much as I’ve sympathised with people who have been injured in the past, I’ve never really been able to relate or understand what goes on both mentally or physically to an injured person. Until this week.

Before Tuesday the worst injury I’d ever had was a sprained ankle. But this week while out riding with my dog, I compound fractured my tibia at the ankle, snapped my fibula and dislocated my ankle in one foul swoop.

Since then, this past week has been a pretty big roller-coaster of emotions. Plans to shoot the remaining rounds of the MX Nationals have been shot to pieces, and I’ve spent hours wondering what the hell went wrong and have mentally kicked myself with a thousand “what if” and “if only” questions.

Then there’s the frustration of waiting for surgery in the emergency hospital ward, praying you’re next on the list to go under the knife. There’s the uncertainty of what the future holds and how much rehab I’m going to have to go through in order to get full movement back in my munted ankle.

There’s the anxiety and temptation to push the healing process and try and get back faster than what’s realistically possible, and thereby running the risk of doing more damage or prolonging the down-time. On top of that, there’s the feeling of loss of not being able to ride and doing what I love for an extended period of time.

It’s a real cocktail of emotions, and that’s without taking into account the pressure that racers – and all sports athletes for that matter – are under to return to the top of their game in the shortest possible timeframe. For those guys, their fitness and form is their money-maker and I can only imagine how much more pressure that adds to the shoulders of riders.

Speaking of injured riders, Matt Moss’s Motul Pirelli Suzuki teammate Rhys Carter announced earlier this week that he broke his wrist while riding at Taupo on Sunday. There’s no word how long he will be out for, but it would be surprising to see him back in the saddle at the three remaining rounds of the MX Nationals.

Another rider who’s announced he’s out of action for Raymond Terrace this weekend is departing motocross legend Jay Marmont, who’s still trying to recover from jarring his wrist at Conondale three weeks ago. It’s expected he’ll be back in action for Gladstone and Coolum, though.

Finally, I want to give big props to Meghan Rutledge, who scored an impressive second overall in the Women’s World Motocros Championship at Loket, Czech Republic over the weekend. It mightn’t have been the trophy she was after, but to see any Aussie at the top of the world stage is brilliant. Well done, Meg!

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