Tauranga's top young motocross riders competed against 130 of the country's best at the KTM TSS Red Baron NZ Mini Motocross Nationals in Upper Hutt at the weekend.

The weather stayed mainly fine during the weekend competition at Kapi Mana Motocross Club, with only a light shower on Saturday afternoon.

Tauranga riders compete in the KTM TSS Red Baron NZ Mini Motocross Nationals in Upper Hutt.

Tauranga Motorcycle Treasurer Nicki Blake says the Kapi Mana Club had done a lot of work on the track ready for the event.

"The track was mainly hard packed clay with lots of tight corners to test the young riders skills."

The children rode a practice/qualifying round plus three races on Saturday, followed by a further two races before prizegiving on Sunday afternoon.

Kristian Crane rode in the Motomart six to eight years intro trail class and came third in qualifying, but came off his bike in the first race and hurt his back.

On the second day of racing he came seventh overall out of 11 riders.

Tyler Wiremu rode in the Boyles Kawasaki 50cc four to seven years intro MX class.

Nicki says the six-year-old had a couple of big falls in his first race, but picked himself up and came back strong to win race two.

"Unfortunately another couple of crashes over the rest of the weekend slowed him down, but overall he did well to bring home the fifth place trophy in this class of 15 riders."

Brothers Sam and Wade Meredith rode in the Maidstone Yamaha 50cc 6-8 years MX class.

This was a super competitive class with 25 riders in total and Nicki says there was some hard and fast racing, accompanied by some big crashes.

Sam Meredith, 8, was hoping for a spot on the podium, but just missed out ending up in fifth overall.

Sam rode consistently all weekend and although he held off his main North Island rivals, he just couldn't catch the top South Island riders.

Younger brother Wade ended up in 17th place overall and Nicki says he was happy with that as it was his first national event.

Shelby Catley, 10, was the only girl from Tauranga to head to the Nationals and rode in the Motomart 7-11 years trail class.

Shelby rode consistently all weekend to end up in sixth place overall out of 15 riders.

Jacob Hunt represented Tauranga in the Wellington Pipelines 9-11 years 65cc MX class.

The nine-year-old has only been racing this bike for five months and was up against 42 other riders, most of which were older than him, in this the fastest and most serious mini racing class.

On Saturday he qualified 15th fastest, placing in the top 30 riding group.
He had a bad fall in race one where his bike landed on top of him but despite being in a lot of pain he managed to hop back on and cross the finish line.

The big crash coupled with some unlucky starts over the rest of the weekend slowed the usually very speedy Jacob down.

He placed 22nd place overall.