Gavin Faith went 1-2 in Darwin upon return to Carlton Dry Honda. Image: Grant Reynolds/FiftySix Clix.

Carlton Dry Honda Racing’s Gavin Faith departed Darwin’s opening weekend of Terex Australian Supercross with the joint lead in the SX-Lites series, returning straight home to the US in preparation for round three.

Faith will be based in America during the early parts of his ASX title defence, and despite struggling with a lack of seat time on his Australian-prepared CRF250R, he was content with a 1-2 performance at Hidden Valley.

Faith won Saturday’s opening round in a perfect start to defending his title. The defending champion won his heat race convincingly but didn’t get the best start in the 12-lap final.

Faith worked his way up into second in the first few laps and capitalised on a mistake by Luke Styke to move into the race lead.

“I got a fourth or fifth place start and worked my way around a few guys in the first couple of laps and got into second,” Faith said. “Styke was a little way ahead of me and I tried to reel him in. He ended up going down and I got into the lead.

“I had a moment and almost stalled and he caught back up to me, other than that it was pretty smooth.”

After reversing the order on Sunday, Styke and Faith left Darwin tied on championship points at the top of the standings. Faith admitted a lack of seat time probably cost him a better result on Sunday.

“I got a pretty good start behind Styke but I struggled a little bit,” Faith said. ”I wasn’t quite used to the bike. I had a very short time on the bike and I struggled with arm pump pretty bad.

“I am heading back to the US in between but I am looking forward to the next few rounds. We will regroup and I will come in a bit earlier so we can do some testing.”