After five action-packed rounds the Monster Energy MX Nationals’ tempo has slowed ever so slightly as the teams and riders regroup in a welcome mid-season break.

Behind the scenes there is plenty of work being done, and Williams Event Management’s Kevin Williams is still at full throttle trying to ensure the second half of the season is just as exciting and successful as the first.

MotoOnline caught up with Williams for a brief review of the 2013 season so far.

Kevin Williams is excited about what the second-half of the Monster Energy MX Nationals season holds. Image: Jeff Crow/Sport the Library.

Each of the three classes – MX1, MX2 and MXD – have seen an extremely high level of racing and competition. Can you identify a standout rider from each class, and why they’ve caught your attention?

In MXD I’d pick Jack Simpson. A lot of riders get that red plate in their first year in and they struggle to be able to maintain it. He’s dropped it now but he’s held a very level head. The kid’s got skills in all areas. He speaks well, he presents well, for me, coming out of juniors, he seems to be pretty much the complete package.

Luke Clout would be my MX2 standout. He’s the rookie in the class. To win a round in your rookie year is a fantastic effort, again with the depth of the field in that class, he’s using all of the resources around him – the team, the infrastructure, the advice from his peers, and not letting it go to his head. We saw him last year at Moree come back and win the Under 19s. I think that did go to his head a bit, and he probably thought he would go to Coolum and absolutely clean up again, and he didn’t. To his credit, he’s taken all of that on board. He seems a much wiser motocross rider in a very short period of time. He’s putting all the elements together.

Matt Moss is my MX1 standout. Mossy came into the season a little bit underdone, and there was an injury cloud and all of those kind of things. The Moss’ can be hot and cold, but consistency is something they sometimes struggle with. We’ve seen that in the Open class before, but really this is his first really solid run in the Open class. He was very open and vocal at the start that he didn’t like GoPro Super Pole, and that he wasn’t keen on those elements, but with Dan Reardon in his corner, they’ve gone away and trained for those elements.

The reason he stands out for me is that he is doing the things Monday to Friday to make up for any shortfalls in his gear bag. His consistency, his qualifying ability, his ability to push right through a race without throwing it away – he seems to have matured in a big way. Again, he is listening to the advice of those around him.

Jack Simpson is Williams’ MXD standout pick. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.

With five rounds ticked off the series has travelled to a variety of different locations and tracks that present different challenges to riders. What are your thoughts on the level of tracks visited to date?

The level of the championship is not by accident. It’s been a lot of work. We held a promoters conference and every organising club had two delegates attend in January, and everybody’s working hard to achieve the best results. The bar is being lifted. We’ve had a lot of different elements thrown at us and the championship is still very much alive. Going into the half-way mark, we have this good opportunity to look back at what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, and make sure that we continue to tweak the product in the coming five rounds.

The GoPro Super Pole session adds a new and exciting element to the MX Nationals. How has it been received across the first half of the season?

I think it’s added a number of elements – the fact that its got championship points, the fact that its just a single lap without any room for error. It’s added another element to the riders’ preparation. Winning a championship is not necessarily about the guy who can just turn the throttle fast. You’ve got to have the elements of the team right, your training right, the people around you right. Watching it, it’s very spectacular. The crowd are getting engaged at every round, and again going back to the longer motos, it’s giving us something that’s both sharp and punchy, and unique in the way that we’re doing it. I’m pretty excited and very happy with how it’s going.

Williams says plenty of hard work has gone into preparing the best tracks possible for the series. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

There has been persistent issues with the delivery of live timing, many seeming to stem from the popularity of the events and the sheer number of people accessing the 3G services in the more rural areas. How have you been able to manage this and do you expect the situation to improve at coming rounds?

Whilst I appreciate that people are very disappointed, we are as well. We haven’t stopped working on this. There’s a number of issues that are causing the problem. One of the biggest is the number of people now attending each of these rounds. They’re all getting onto the internet via their phones and devices. To be able to send the timing out, you need to use quite a lot of data. At round one you couldn’t even send a text message. At round two in the afternoon there you had so many people taking photos and using Instagram and Facebook that the whole thing just slowed down.

I would imagine Appin being so close to Sydney we should be fine. We’ve sent the computer back to America, we’re looking at other elements to be be able to offer live timing at the track without using the internet via a dedicated intranet. The easiest thing to do would be to throw it all out the window and go back to the old system of having no live timing, but that’s going backwards and not forwards, and that’s not the philosophy at WEM.

Thanks for your time Kevin. It’s been a great season to date!

Watch this space, there will be plenty more to talk about in the second half of the season!