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TOKOROA forestry contractor Sean Clarke has added yet another title to the already well stocked Suzuki off-road trophy cabinet.
His latest success is clinching the Suzuki-backed New Zealand Enduro Championships. In addition to taking the over 200cc two-stroke class, Clarke finished the five round series as overall winner.
This follows his earlier success in the Grand National Cross Country series, which he also won on his Whyteline Motorcycles Suzuki RM250.
In the Suzuki New Zealand Enduro Championship, Clarke took five wins from five starts on the RM250, getting the ball rolling on the steep high country farmland around Oparau with a clear win in the over 200 two-stroke class, and the outright win as well. So dominant was Clarke here that he was more than 42 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor at the end of a long, hard day.
Next up was round two near Wellington. This featured open pine forests and fast 4WD tracks – a fairly tight, but not technically challenging course. Again Clarke was more than 45 seconds clear of the field at the end of the day.
Auckland’s Riverhead forest was the venue for the third round and here Clarke underlined his dominance by winning all but one of the terrain tests to clock in a staggering two minutes ahead of the field on his flying RM250 Suzuki.
Waimeha in the Central North Island hosted the fourth round of the Suzuki NZ Enduro Championship. This was run on tight and wet trails that got very muddy.
“The mud didn’t worry me because the RM250 is so light and easy to ride and it has a wonderfully wide band of useable power which enabled me to virtually idle it around,” Clarke says.
At Waimeha he won from Kiwi Rider magazine’s Dene Humphrey (Honda CRF250) by 37 seconds.
Humphrey had thrown down a challenge and with the final round in his regular training ground, Woodhill Forest, it could be expected that he would give Clarke a run for his money.
And that’s exactly what Humphrey did, winning the first three terrain tests from Clarke last Sunday.
The fourth test saw Clarke tie with Humphrey, so it all came down to the final terrain test.
“Dene was 13 seconds up on me going into that final test. He’d beaten me by two seconds in the first one, three seconds in the next and put another eight seconds on me in the third. He was riding really well so it was a relief when I beat him by 20 seconds in the final terrain test!” Clarke admits.
“The course was pretty tight but that suited the Suzuki. The RM has so much low-end and mid-range power and torque it just does everything so easily. It’s a brilliant bike and I cannot think of a single thing I would change on it. I have absolutely no complaints. How could I? It’s given me another New Zealand Championship!” Clarke adds.
