With a week full of rain, the 5^th round was looking like it would be a three-peat of wet racing and FMX.  Things were actually looking peachy by Thursday with the sun poking its head out and creating one of the hottest steamiest environments I’ve ever been in.  At least it meant we had a good chance of a Freestyle show!

We arrived at the event in the suburb of Ancol which is right on the beach and next to all the theme parks like Sea World, Dufan and water parks.  The wind was blowing hard straight off the beach, but with some common sense (which is sometimes lacking from other promoter’s) we had the FMX ramps set up so it was a perfect tail wind from the sea breezes.  The FMX downramp was huge, Adam Blackwell certainly put the machines to good use and she was looking like you couldn’t miss it. 

The Powercross course was also the best looking track we had seen for all 5 rounds, and it was Lightning Productions idea to have a huge finale and they weren’t skimping.  Although the track was made out of beach sand, there was enough clay mixed in with it that it really packed in hard.  We all anticipated it blowing out really quickly with deep ruts everywhere.  The triple was pretty big for a sand course out of a tight and short berm, the rhythm section had 2 options of double double double, or go outside and it was open to a double and triple out or other way around.  Unfortunately there wasn’t enough height on the first lip to make the first triple.  Lewis Woods found out the hard way in practice when he went A over T when he cased the triple.  A bruised and swollen wrist but nothing to stress about.

Qualifying saw Lewis in first, Ashcan second and kiwi Matt Hunt in 3^rd place.  Followed by the top Indonesian riders Aep, Agi and Aldi.  The Indonesians were putting it to the boys again, but the sand factor favoured the Aussies and New Zealander.  Youngster ‘Black Wheel’ was running a respectable 7^th position in the qualifying too. 

As for the FMX, we were waiting quite a while for carpet to arrive so we could hit up the ramp as we were going to be up to the swingarm in sand ruts within a few jumps.  So we played it safe until we were shown the ‘Red Carpet’ literally.  I simply wanted a metre wide strip of carpet, second hand to ride on.  Instead we were delivered brand new Red Carpet.  I’m not sure if we were in Indonesia or opening a new movie in Hollywood.  Either way it worked a treat.  The ramp however wasn’t playing the game as nicely.  After the debacle of having a crappy ramp at the 3^rd round, we had it fixed as close to a 9.1m radius as we could, but until we hit it at 75ft we wouldn’t know exactly how good it was.  Ahhh yeah, well lets say it had a surprise in store for us.  Clinton jumped it first and it looked like he was going to the moon!  Right at the top there was a massive kick, similar to a dirt kicker that throws the front of your bike down while shooting you to the stars.  Not exactly what you want in Freestyle.  Anyway Adam’s huge downramp he built came in handy when Clinton dropped almost a bike length short and needing every centimetre of the safety deck.  I turned around hit her up on the 4-banger which as you know isn’t my choice of rides.  It was all ok, but everytime I went for a trick I would find myself nose-diving because of the kick and the way the 4stroke shuts off after you leave the lip.

After only a couple of practice jumps we were back off the course so the racing could commence with the 65’s and 85’s tearing up the track.  There is actually some good talent in the young ranks and it’ll be interesting to see them grow up into the next generation of Indonesian racers.  With races like the Powercross series they are getting exposed to what it takes to be international competitors and it should build a good base to work with.  There were some good riders and there were some big crashes, but the kids took it well.  It’s really humbling to see the young riders who definitely don’t have it as good as us in Australia to be driving across the country to each event on their brand new little KTM’s and having fun.  There would be serious sacrifices from their families to keep them going.

Next up it was the special racing with the Power to Power races that couldn’t be run the weeks before because of the rain.  Going on the qualifying results of weeks past it was a head to head racing style as seen in the SuperX series down under.  Lewis Woods has always been the man to beat, but in his first race in the power to power he came unstuck in the whoops section when he caught a nasty cross rut and ended up doing a full turndown whip only 6 inches off the ground before quickly taking a dirt sample.  Agi Agassi was right behind him and managed to get cleaned up by Lewie’s bike.  The only thing that saved Agi was his bike kept running and he could complete the race not bothered by Lewis as he was kicking his bike over for most of the race.
 Another good race was the match up of Aussie Kim Ashkenazi vs Kiwi Matt Hunt for the 2^nd power to power event.  You really have to give it to Ashcan, the guy is 35, mixing it with racers who are half his age and he can managed to get the holeshot almost every time.  Once he had the holeshot it was almost impossible for Hunt to take over.  He was relegated to watching Kim from a bike length behind the entire 2 laps.  It made for some bloody good racing as the boys battled hard.