BillyMac suffered an 18th place overall in MX1 at Coonabarabran. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

Scottish standout Billy Mackenzie’s nightmare Coonabarabran round of the Monster Energy MX Nationals means he faces an uphill battle if he’s to race for the MX1 title in 2012.

Mackenzie was fast at the Goanna Tracks complex and ran up front in the opening two motos, but paid the price of inconsistency throughout all three motos. His end result was 12-DNF-20, resulting in 18th overall for the round.

With that result, Mackenzie is now 14th in the title chase after two of 10 rounds, a massive 81 points in arrears of early series leader, Josh Coppins.

“The first two races we were running up front but I had a small mistake in the first race,” Mackenzie commented. “I tried to switch lines and I stalled the bike and it took me a while to get started and with the shorter races – you just lose so many places.

“Then in the second race, I came out and was feeling good, I got past Brad [Anderson], then I kinda switched lines because I was following [Jake] Moss through the whoops and it caught me out. I hit my head pretty hard and I DNF’d.

“All in all it’s another frustrating weekend, but I feel good on the bike. I know the speed’s there so there’s a lot of positives. Maybe I just need to calm down a bit and accept a top three instead of going for the win.

“[I’ll] try and build some points from here and get some momentum and see if I can win some races in a couple of rounds.”

The series will continue in two weeks time at Wonthaggi in Victoria on 28-29 April.