Image: John Hamilton (Mad Dog Images).

CDR Yamaha owner Craig Dack has confirmed the team will exit the Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC) and Australian Four-Day Enduro (A4DE) for 2017 in order to focus on its title-winning motocross and supercross squad.

With over 20 years of operating Yamaha Motor Australia’s factory motocross/supercross team, CDR took on the off-road operation ahead of 2013 when the legendary Ballard’s team exited the sport in an official capacity.

However with the Motul MX Nationals becoming increasingly important – and challenging – to win each season, as well as the resurgence of the Australian Supercross Championship, CDR Yamaha will take a step back, elevating Active8 Yamaha to become the primary team.

“At the end of 2012, Ballard’s stepped away from running their race team at the 11th-hour,” Dack told MotoOnline.com.au. “Yamaha spoke to me about it and at that time supercross was a basket-case and we only had 10 rounds of motocross. We felt that doing 10 rounds of motocross wasn’t enough and nobody was certain where supercross was going.

“Yamaha needed somebody to run its off-road team at that point and I was up for a new challenge. With the amount of people that we had, I felt that we were over-staffed, so I took the off-road thing on. Obviously, in the first year [Daniel] Milner won the AORC outright and the four-day, which was awesome, and we had a heap of good results since.

“But then in that time and throughout the process, not only did we end up having 10 rounds of motocross, but supercross is back on track with six rounds now, we’ve had the 12 off-road rounds, the four-day and even for a couple of years we had endurocross as well – it was really starting to load us up.

“We hung in there for as long as we could, but also during that time the Active8 team grew as well and are very solid. So in discussions with Yamaha, we were quite well-funded in the off-road team by Yamaha, both parties felt like we had done our bit, filled that gap and now it’s time to morph back into what we are as a motocross and supercross team.”

CDR Yamaha has won the A4DE three consecutive years in a row with Milner, who also won it in 2012 with Ballard’s, and also clinched the AORC crown with Milner at their first attempt together in 2013. He’s poised to contend for a fifth-straight A4DE victory at the 2016 edition in Mansfield, Victoria, next month.

“I enjoyed the riders and Denise Hore did a great job organising the series, which she’s backed off from now, but I think they’re reinvigorating the AORC again and it’s getting better,” he added. “Off-road is important to Yamaha and it’s a very complex championship to run, but I believe it will be very strong again into the future.”

This year saw multiple national champion Chris Hollis – tipped to announce his retirement at this year’s A4DE – finish third outright and second in E2, while teammate Tom McCormack claimed 10th outright and fourth in E2.