Image: Foremost Media.

Organisers are pressing on with tomorrow’s Maitland round of Penrite ProMX despite the NSW Government placing a lockdown on Greater Sydney, Central Coast, Blue Mountains and Wollongong from tonight.

A bulletin distributed from Motorcycling Australia (MA) to competitors and a trackside briefing held this afternoon has officially confirmed the event is proceeding as planned.

The New South Wales lockdown will be enforced from 6:00pm for a two-week duration. Maitland is around an hour north of Central Coast, prompting officials to continue with the event following a series of emergency meetings at the circuit between stakeholders this afternoon.

As a result of the latest government guidelines, updates have been made to the ProMX series’ Covid-19-Safe Plan that will enforce face masks in specific areas of the event, including the starting area, mechanics area and podium tomorrow.

Beyond that, social distancing and regular use of sanitiser have been reaffirmed by the ProMX Management Team, with teams having to use QR codes and event ticketing barcodes on arrival to the venue.

More curiously, ProMX is recommending ‘that all persons located in the covid-19 affected areas of Greater Sydney as defined by NSW Health should not attend the event unless authorised under the NSW Government Regulations’.

Latest travel alerts from the state government suggest that ‘people who have been in the Greater Sydney region (including the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong) on or after June 21 should follow the stay at home orders for a period of 14 days after they left Greater Sydney’.

It is understood that multiple top riders from those areas did depart their bases prior to that date on Monday this week, however, there have also been a mix of entrants who have opted not to remain in the region or compete this weekend.

All indications are that fans will still be able to attend the Maitland round on Sunday, if permitted by travel restrictions, and that the one person per four square metre rule for outdoor settings won’t have any direct effect on the amount of people expected to attend round.