Kiwi motorcycling starlet, Avalon Biddle, is no stranger to going places. But at the third round of the NZSBK Championship held at Hampton Downs, she continued to set the benchmark for female Kiwi racers to aspire to.
Aboard her MTF Finance sponsored Kawasaki ZX-6R, Biddle showed why she is one of the top talents this country has produced in recent years by becoming the first woman to claim her third NZ TT Trophy.
Having already won the NZ TT silverware in both the 125cc and Superlite classes, Biddle wasn’t particularly sure about her chances going into the round at Hampton Downs of adding the Supersport trophy to her list of accomplishments.
“It’s pretty cool, I’ve won the 125 and superlite TT’s before, but to be honest I didn’t think I’d get the 600 as well,” Biddle said.
The 15-lap race saw a fierce battle for top hours between Biddle and Tony Summers - also astride a ZX-6R - with Biddle holding on to take the victory.
“It was cool to have quite a few of the MTF franchise owners there when I won the TT as a lot of them are ex-racers and I’m really grateful for the support,” she said.
The TT win was the highlight of Biddle’s weekend, as while she took out the biggest race of the weekend, arch-rival for the 2019 Supersport championship title, Toby Summers, took home victory in the previous two races to extend his championship lead over Avalon.
“To be honest, heading into Hampton Downs I was only 9-points behind Toby, but he rode really well at Hampton Downs and extended his lead to 22-points. It’s a bit annoying that he extended that lead a bit, but there’s still 6 races to go so anything can happen.”
So with the supersport title still up for grabs, what will the fastest woman on the grid be focussing on for the rest of the championship?
“The goal going forward is to ride consistently more than anything, she says. “I need race wins at Manfeild to keep my championship alive, but I’d rather stay consistent than be there fighting and potentially messing it all up.
Manfeild and Taupo are the two tracks I’ve done best at historically. This year is really different for me as normally I start the year really average down south and get faster and faster and by the last round I’m on top of my game, whereas this year I got pole at Ruapuna which is a real shame the race got cancelled.
I think having Damo Rees do Tri Series really helped with that, and he’s obviously really fast from racing a season in Australia so it really got me up to speed racing against him before the NZSBK championship started.
I’m feeling really positive about Manfeild and Taupo but we’ll have to see what happens really.”
Biddle sits 22 points behind Summers in the overall standings for the 2019 Supersport title with two rounds remaining in the Championship with round 4 taking place at Manfeild the weekend of March 30-31 with the final round hitting Taupo the weekend of April 6-7.