Crashes plague Nick Schmidt in South Australia

It was a tough weekend for Wilson Coolair Motul Factory Suzuki’s Nick Schmidt and Luke Wilson, with bad luck at Round three of the Australian Supercross Championship at Virginia in South Australia proving costly.

With both riders making solid progress at the team’s recent outing in Melbourne, the pair headed in to the weekend looking to better their performances, however both Wilson and Schmidt suffered one of the most difficult outings of the season.

Schmidt who has consistently been one of the fastest SX1 riders in the field since his arrival from the USA suffered one of the biggest crashes of the weekend on Saturday night.

After qualifying in an impressive fourth position, Schmidt was confident ahead of his first race of the evening. Unfortunately, a first lap crash which saw him go down hard placed him in sixth at the conclusion of the race, but despite being battered and bruised Schmidt took to the line for the final and salvaged a tenth place at the conclusion of the round.

“The weekend started off really well – I was fast all day and I just made a stupid mistake in the heat race and hurt my knee a bit,” Schmidt explained.

“It was a massive crash that I had, but I knew that I could ride better than I could walk so in the main I gave it my all. I had a good jump but I got hit by another rider and went down so I had to get back up and I eventually got back to tenth.

“Although it doesn’t look great on paper, there were a lot of positives to take from the weekend. We certainly have the speed so now it’s about putting it all together. I’ll have a couple of days off to let the body rest and then and come out even stronger in Sydney.”

Luke Wilson was unable to line up for the nights SX1 main event. - Credit: Aaryn MInerds

Unfortunately, fellow SX1 teammate Wilson did not line up for the main event in South Australia on Saturday night.