Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

A pair of light tower outages at Jimboomba X Stadium last Saturday night caused for immense concern in the latter stages of the SX1 main event to open the 2017 Australian Supercross Championship.

It’s understood that the initial outage was caused by a technical fault in the tower located prior to whoop section at around the 15-lap mark, while on the final lap another outage occurred at the end and beginning of two rhythm sections, which was the fault of an attendee hitting the emergency stop.

“The first set of lights that went out was due to a technical fault,” SB Promotions’ Scott Bannan told MotoOnline.com.au. “I think that gave some idiot in the crowd an idea, someone actually hit the emergency stop and then ran off on the next one – he was taken away by the Police.

“I can’t put a price on the amount of stupidity that someone would think that is funny. We were fortunate enough that there was only 20 seconds to go in the race – it obviously would’ve ruined the whole night. My answer to it is that we’ll have security next to each light tower, which is just ridiculous that you have to do that – I can’t risk the safety of the riders.”

Main event victor Justin Brayton (Penrite Honda Racing) spoke of the outages and when asked if it affected his race afterwards, he stated: “Not really, it was towards the end of the race – I think I had five laps to go when one of them went out.

“It was the sweeper before the whoops, so it wasn’t too bad, but you couldn’t go a fast as you would like – nobody could. I think on the last lap, one went out right before the rhythm section – that one was a little bit sketchy. Thankfully it happened with just a lap to go and it was just the section before the finish.”

Bannan and his team are slated to host the final round of the Australian Supercross Championship again at Jimboomba on 18 November, while the series will now head to Bacchus Marsh in Victoria on 14 October for round two.