ORANGE’S Brodie Hartin will get his first taste of overseas riding when he travels to New Zealand this weekend for the fourth round of the Super X Australian Supercross Champion-ship.

Hartin is currently enjoying his best season in the championship despite working full-time, sitting in 15th place in the Pro Lites category and second in the privateer (no factory support) section.

This has encouraged him and his father Peter to contest the back-to-back rounds in Auckland and Dunedin over the next two weeks.

Hartin originally wasn’t going to compete in the New Zealand rounds and as a result he missed the cut-off for getting his own bike taken across the Tasman

But it won’t matter because Hartin has found an offer that is just as good, if not better.

He has gained support from a motorcycle shop in Auckland run by Kiwi motocross legend Daryl Hurley that will loan him a bike for the two races, with Hartin supplying his own suspension, number boards and anything else he wants to make the bike feel like his own.

It will go some way to easing the burden in what will still be a busy month with the final four rounds of the championship happening in consecutive weeks.

“This week is round four in Auckland and the following week is round five at Dunedin in the South Island,” Peter Hartin said.

“We will fly over Friday, race Saturday and come home Sunday, work a week and then fly over again.

“The following week we have the Sydney round at Parramatta footy stadium and then the final round at Brisbane the week after.

“Originally we weren’t going to New Zealand but it was a stroke of good luck.

“We didn’t think we were positioned as well as we were after three rounds considering he didn’t make points in the first round.

“We weren’t going because of the cost but because Brodie is positioned 15th, then all the seeded riders are just going to go ahead in the points and leave us behind.

“We could fall from 15th to outside the top 20 where we don’t want to be.”

The two most recent rounds of the championship at Canberra and Launceston have brought good points hauls for Hartin, while the first round at Newcastle was promising but a crash during the heats saw him miss the finals.

“He is running quite well,” Peter Hartin said.

“He’s currently running 15th outright which is probably the best he has done so far.

“We didn’t score any points off the first round.

“He had a really good run through qualifying and through the heats but then things just didn’t go his way.

“He only had 10th or 11th gate pick which puts him in the middle of the gates.

“He had a good run to the corner.

“It was the first race back since they had done track prep, he had the holeshot (first to the corner) and it just washed out.

“About nine or 10 bikes went over the top of him so we didn’t even make the finals because of that.”