KTM Australia press release:

KTM Motocross Racing Team newcomer Egan Mastin made his Australian Supercross Championship debut at Jimboomba’s opening round of the 2017 season in Queensland on Saturday night.

Following a successful 2017 MX Nationals season that saw him clinch the MX2 title at Coolum’s final round, Newcastle-based Mastin received the call to move beneath the fac-tory KTM awning for his first year contesting the six-round supercross schedule.

Piloting a KTM 250 SX-F in the talent-packed SX2 category, Mastin kicked off the day with a promising showing during practice where he logged multiple fast laps amongst the most experienced riders in class.

Despite crashing heavily in timed qualifying, the gritty 19-year-old still managed to qualify in position nine, however the pain of his mishap ultimately caused for an early end to his evening after circulating to a 12th-place result in SX2 heat two.

Although sore, Mastin escaped the incident without any serious injury and along with the entire KTM Motocross Racing Team has already devised a plan to refine his supercross program before the second round of the series.

Under the guidance team manager Jay Marmont, the supercross rookie Mastin will build his experience over the coming weeks ahead of Bacchus Marsh’s second round in Victoria on Saturday, 14 October.

Jay Marmont – KTM Motocross Racing Team manager: Egan has hurt his sternum and his back, but he’s okay. Basically he was too sore to ride, so we’ll just take the weekend off and make sure his injuries are okay before we start do-ing a little bit during the week to prepare him for the next round. I can only guide him, so he made the decision himself and we totally support that. We didn’t even think that he was going to be able to hop on the bike after that crash, so to see him actually out there riding was good. It means we can go back to the drawing board a little bit and work on what we need to work on. I also think it’s good for him to actually do his first supercross race to realise where we’re at, because we’ve ticked some boxes there and now we can move forward. He’s been fast, but coming to a race is different to being at the practice track – he hasn’t really been riding with many people – so he’s had nothing to really gauge off. Coming to a race and seeing what his competitors are doing, I think being able to do that will help him get that race-craft and we can work on that. I know exactly what we need to do, we’ve got a game plan and he’s going to come down and live in Wollongong, so we’ll be at the track with him every day and hopefully that helps him going into Melbourne.

Egan Mastin – KTM 250 SX-F: I was excited to get the day started and start with the new team. The start of the day was good and I actually felt comfortable, everything was going well and I was happy with the bike. My foot came off in one of the sections during qualifying and I went over the ’bars and hit my head pretty hard. It wasn’t my night, but I’m going to take the positives from the start of the day and focus on what’s next from there. I couldn’t ask for a better team to be on, they’re an awesome group of people and we’re already talking about how to make things better, so we’ll be putting the work in over the next two weeks and I’m very excited to keep learning.