Brady Kurtz the early Australian Solo Championship leader

Gillman Media 5 January 2025

Brady Kurtz is the early leader of the 2025 Australian Solo Championship after a dominating performance in the opening round at Gillman Speedway in Adelaide on Friday night (3 January).

Kurtz only dropped one point in the heats then won his semi-final and the final to finish with 18 out of a possible 19 series points, three ahead of the Holders brothers, Jack and Chris, who finished second and third respectively behind Kurtz in the final.

Despite the line-up including five previous National Champions - defending champion Rohan Tungate, Jack Holder, Max Fricke, Brady Kurtz and Chris Holder – and the winner of last season’s FIM Oceania Championship, Jaimon Lidsey, Jack Holder and Brady Kurtz went into the meeting as slight favourites by virtue of their results from the previous weekend where Holder won the International Speedway Masters at Gillman, and Kurtz the Phil Crump Classic at Mildura. Chris Holder and Jaimon Lidsey were the runners-up in those two meetings so were also fancied ahead of Tungate and Fricke, and that is more or less how it played out, although Lidsey didn’t do as well as expected.

Kurtz and both Holders all won their first two rides to be unbeaten on 6 points after 8 heats, but there was a surprise result in heat three when two of the riders considered as likely “spoilers”, Keynan Rew and Ben Cook, led Fricke and Tungate home, meaning a pointless opening ride for the defending champion.

After a satisfactory second place behind Kurtz in the opening heat, Lidsey also later suffered a pointless ride when he finished last behind Chris Holder, Rew and Josh Pickering in heat six.

In the third round of heats only Chris Holder could maintain his unbeaten record when he beat Jack in heat nine. Kurtz dropped his only point for the night to Max Fricke in heat 11, and at the interval it was Chris on 9, Kurtz, Jack Holder and Rew on 8, with Max Fricke coming into the picture on 7. Still struggling despite a win in his third ride was Tungate on 5, along with Zach Cook and 16-year-old debutant Mitchell McDiarmid. Ben Cook had looked good in his opening two rides but suffered a bike failure at the start of his third to be down on 4, with, in a major surprise, Lidsey only on 3.

The fourth round saw Fricke continue his resurgence to chalk up his third win after his first ride third place, while Tungate and Lidsey both came back into contention. Both had relatively easy rides to advance to 8 and 6 points respectively. Of the front runners, Kurtz, Jack Holder and Rew all met in heat 15 and finished in that order, while Chris Holder dropped his first point to Fricke after a close race which saw the lead change a couple of times. Mitch McDiarmid’s run at a semi-final place more or less came to an end in this round when he clipped the fence and fell after an inside pass by Ben Cook in the race that Lidsey won. He still had one race to go but was lining up against Kurtz, Chris Holder and Tungate so qualification was very unlikely.

That was heat 19 and they finished in that order which meant Kurtz was the top scorer with 14, and Chris was next best with 13. The other major heat of the last round was heat 18 where Lidsey finally showed what was expected of him when he beat Jack Holder and Fricke. Rew also won his last heat to finish third, on countback over Jack Holder, on 12 points.

Under the normal Gillman format that would have seen Rew straight into the final, but Motorcycling Australia prefers to use the two semi-final format and that didn’t look good for Rew when the points meant he was up against Kurtz, Fricke (11) and Lidsey (9) in the first semi-final.

I’m sure the general consensus was the lad has done all the hard work to finish third in the points but was now likely to finish last in the semi-final, but he proved us wrong. While Kurtz was off and away, Rew continued the form he’d shown throughout the heats to resist a strong challenge from Fricke to take second place and a well-deserved berth in the final.

The second semi-final brought together Chris Holder (13), Jack Holder (12), Rohan Tungate (9) and Zach Cook (8), and from the start Chris (in red) hugged the pole line while Jack took Tungate right out to the fence, effectively ending Tungate’s race as he dropped to last place. He didn’t give up and chased the others but in his desperation, fell into the fence between turns three and four, on the third lap. In looked straight forward for the Holder brothers in the rerun, but Cook showed he deserved his place by taking it up to Jack in a good race for second behind Chris. Cook passed Jack on the opening lap before Jack regained the qualifying place late on the second lap.

The final was a close race but pretty clear-cut as Kurtz led all the way from Jack, Chris and Rew.

With points of 4-3-2-1 in the final being added to the heat points Kurtz, as mentioned, finished with 18, with Chris Holder and Jack Holder on 15, Keynan Rew 13, Max Fricke 11, Rohan Tungate and Jaimon Lidsey 9 and Zach Cook 8.

Although Kurtz has previously won the championship, in 2016 in his first attempt, this is the first time in eight attempts that he has led after the first round. In fact the best he’d done previously was six points behind eventual champion Rohan Tungate in 2018, so Kurtz will now go into the rest of the series full of confidence for a second championship crown. The second round could, however, change things significantly, as Mildura is a completely different track to ride than Gillman, but Kurtz should still be confident of a good showing after his win there last week when he only dropped one point (to Lidsey).