Ben Townley pushing himself to the limits in the tough Australian format. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

The motos at Conondale’s opening round last Sunday provided a pure test of man and machine with two back-to-back motos to commence proceedings, before a 30-plus minute moto capped things off.

Townley won all three in convincing fashion, but later admitted to MotoOnline that he was forced to conserve energy throughout the day – especially considering he wasn’t feeling 100 percent on race day.

With Hangtown’s Lucas Oil Pro Motocross opener set for next month, Townley also said that he was thinking of the challenges ahead when he joins TwoTwo Motorsports for that series.

“We’d had a team meeting and they asked me if I was going to push hard and I said yes, because for my career going forward if I want to be back in America, there’s no point me just doing what I have to do to win – I’ve got to push myself and that’s what I tried to do today,” he explained.

“In saying that, it might have looked like I was trying hard, but today was as physically demanding as any GP or national I’ve ever done. It was absolutely physically demanding and I believe that they need to have a look at the length of the back-to-back formats. It’s just far too long in my opinion.

“When you’ve got a 30-minute moto at the end of the day following two back-to-back motos to start with, that’s tough. They ended up shortening it. I complained, I mean I have to be doing long motos, but I also have to be sensible.

“We did 45 minutes riding time in the first two motos if you add them together, that’s a horrendous amount of riding time.”

Speculation mounted this week that Williams Event Management was looking at reverting to a two-moto format, however it’s understood that the three motos will remain, albeit with a specific time limit of 15 minutes each for the first motos, and then 30 for the third.

Townley was last week confirmed to be returning for Coonabarabran’s second round this weekend.