GasGas Racing Team’s Regan Duffy has admitted he is ‘battling demons’ in his 2023 return to the Penrite ProMX Championship, banking more valuable race mileage in the three MX1 motos at Maitland.

The determined Western Australian overcame multiple adversities to return to the gate this year since sustaining life-threatening injuries while competing in October 2021.

Appin was his first gate drop in his comeback, and the number 72 is in the process of building with his best round result of the season to date coming in Albury where he was eighth place overall, before facing a challenging weekend at Maitland.

“It’s been really tough, to be completely honest,” Duffy said to MotoOnline. It’s been super hard, battling demons every weekend to be completely honest. Coming from being in the spot I was, I was sort of at my prime, getting towards my prime. I’ve won a lot of great races, and at the moment I feel like I’m nowhere near that level and it’s really annoying me.

“We are working on it, I’m just trying to take it all on the chin and move forward. It is slowly getting there, I’ve improved from the start of the year so we will keep on ticking on.

“It’s not so much bad memories or anything of the accident, it’s more so, I’m battling with guys that I used to easily beat. I feel like I am sort of riding on edge to run with these dudes, it’s just a bit of a kick in the guts. I feel like I am doing a lot of work, but it is not coming as fast as I would like it.

“I’m a pretty impatient person, so it has been getting to me on days, but I’m just keeping my head down and keeping going with it, so I’ll just try to keep a positive attitude and that seems to be the way to go.”

Duffy ultimately finished the fourth round of the 2023 Penrite ProMX Championship 16th overall with 14-15-14 scores, the Maitland track surface and conditions admittedly not his strong suit, as he looks ahead to the second-half of ProMX season that commences on 28 May at Gillman, South Australia.

“All things considered it’s [Maitland] not really a track that I gel with that well,” he stated. “I actually lost the red plate here when I had it in 2021, so I don’t really have a massive soft spot for the place to be honest. Not to mention a little bit of rain midway through the day made it quite slick.

“I did struggle a little bit with that, it isn’t my forte these conditions, the hard pack style tracks I do struggle with and I am trying to work on it. But unfortunately, with two sub-par starts, there wasn’t really all that much that I could do today.

“All in all I’m happy with some of the riding throughout, there are definitely some things I can work on. There were good parts with it, so I’m happy with that and moving onto round five in Gillman, I’m really looking forward to doing the work these next couple of weeks and getting on with it.”