Something about MX Nationals season always kicks things into overdrive at Foremost Media HQ, not just in terms of MotoOnline.com.au, but overall. It’s a frantic time of the year and rarely tends to reduce as the season goes on. For us, these are the busiest months of the entire year.

Appin is conveniently a home round for us, which is always nice in familiar territory, but it’s by no means shaping up to be any easier for the crew this weekend. With the MX Nationals and Australian Superbike Championship clashing in Sydney on Sunday, it’s a logistical challenge, that’s for sure.

But we’re up for it, well prepared and always excited to go racing. It’s what we’re here for at the end of the day and race weekends produce the most traffic before, during and following, so all’s good! And we’re not the only ones ready to go – there’s a whole field of riders ready to show what they have second time out for season 2016, whether Horsham went their way or not.

While Spence will touch on the upcoming nationals round further below, I wanted to take the opportunity to speak about the Catching Up interview we did with Daniel McCoy on Tuesday just hours after he got out of rehab as an inpatient. There’s a heap more rehabilitation to come for the 31-year-old from Camden, he faces a long road ahead, but is nonetheless in good spirits.

McCoy’s injury or any of the kind can’t be taken lightly, so it’s inspiring to see him as positive and can be under the circumstances. And it’s also been exceptional to see so many people get behind him in the financial sense and by being generally supportive. I know, from speaking to him personally, that he truly appreciates it.

Image: Alex Gobert (Foremost Media).

From this point McCoy will attend this weekend’s MX Nationals at Appin and be part of the commentary crew for the first time, before assessing his options and beginning the next step of rehab as an outpatient. It’s going to be incredibly costly for him, so if you do have anything to spare, a GoFundMe account can be found at this link.

Possibly the biggest – and most shocking – news of all this week was when Motorcycling Australia swiftly announced the appointment of sporting director Peter Doyle as the new acting CEO on Monday. He’s the fourth person in the chair since David White’s departure in 2014 and hopefully we end up seeing things stabilise at this point.

Doyle, who is universally recognised as one of the sport’s top crew chiefs and as the man behind Mat Mladin’s seven American Superbike Championships, stands in for David Cottee, who was in the position only since December last year.

It’s a strange turn of events after Cottee seemed so confident and capable in the job at hand, however the only official info supplied was that they parted ways due to ‘personal reasons’. Regardless, lets move on, hope to see Doyle’s experience and knowledge from within the sport come to the fore for everybody’s sake.

That’s it from me for this week, thanks for stopping past as always, here’s Adam Spence with his take on the week gone by…

I’m not sure about you guys, but that break between rounds one and two of the 2016 Motul MX Nationals went by surprisingly fast for me. These two weeks since the event sure have been jam-packed, so maybe that’s why. Either way, it’s almost time to pack the bags again and head off (conveniently only an hour down the road for me) to Appin to do it all again.

But we’re being faced with another fresh contender this weekend, it’s a contender each and every rider has faced before, a strong contender, one that can really turn things upside down – mother nature. Forecast rain is approaching Appin’s Bellbird Circuit and it’s going to throw a huge spanner in the works if it does arrive.

The surface at Appin is notoriously hard pack and doesn’t exactly enjoy having a tonne of water thrown at it on race day, it’s a surface that takes a few days to soak the water in and it then actually becomes quite enjoyable on the right day.

We know the track crew there try to rip the surface as deep as they can, and they actually have been known to throw down a tonne of water before the event. So you never know, it could end up totally fine if the club thinks ahead in the water department!

Image: Rhys van Slooten.

But if the predictions are correct and we do receive rain on race day, things are more than likely going to get interesting. On a track like that, it’s going to take a rider who’s super smooth, smart and a little bit lucky to come out on top.

In saying that, I’ve witnessed Matt Moss, a rider who really muscles the bike around the track and attacks at all times, ride super fast on a greasy Appin circuit in the past. It could be a case of laying it on the line and making things happen.

On track, the rain will switch things up, but what it will also do is switch things up for me personally as I’m out shooting our exclusive MotoOnline.com.au Highlights film among other projects within my role as production manager at Foremost Media. It’s no secret quality camera equipment like ours isn’t cheap, so it’s kind of scary heading out in the rain to shoot all day.

I’m currently experimenting with some new ways of shooting in the rain, so if you spot me out there with a wild contraption come Sunday, you know I’ve gone out on a limb and tried something new! Apart from being totally saturated at the end of the day, it’s actually an exciting concept shooting a race in the rain, I feel like we could bring something quite interesting to our viewers.

So wish me luck guys, I’m off to do some more experimenting and fingers crossed I’ll nail the perfect wet weather system to ensure you have a unique highlights film to watch come Monday afternoon. Who knows, the weather forecast could be wrong and we might see a rain-free race, guess we’ll have to wait and see, but either way we’ll be there ready to roll!

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