KEY POINTS:
Hamilton's Sloan Frost is all smiles as he builds up for a crack at the New Zealand Motorcycle Road-Race Championships this season.
The 27-year-old has gone from clubman rider to superbike champion in just 12 months - taking the superbike title at the Victoria Motorcycle Club's Winter Series a week ago - and he's bursting with confidence as the national series looms.
"There are a few things we still need to work on to drop an extra couple of seconds off my times to be where I want to be in the nationals.
"It's early days for me with the new 2008 Ninja ZX-10R Kawasaki but it's looking really good so far."
And he's got time on his side as he works towards the five-round national series which kicks off near Invercargill on January 10-11.
"I'm aiming for a top-10 position which I don't think is unreasonable. I know this is just a club series and nationals is going to be a whole different story but it's good to know I'm heading in the right direction to achieve my goals.
"Coming into the weekend's final club round (at Manfeild), I had a 40-point lead in the superbike class and was second in the supersport class as well, just 13 points off the leader, Sam Smith, and 30 points clear of Johnny Burkhart."
But Frost chose to ride just one class, opting to defend his superbike's lead on the Kawasaki ZX-10R.
He leapt off the line in race one but local rider Craig Shirriffs soon shot past to steal the lead.
But Frost wasn't about to give up.
"I started to make a couple of mistakes then he (Shirriffs) started pulling away further and further ... but then he had a bit of a slide and handed first place back to me.
"My pit board said I had a decent gap, so I backed off. Then, within about two laps of backing off, I thought I saw the pit board with - 0 on it and, sure enough, I had Peter Tanner right on me. I managed to hold my line and take the chequered flag for my first win on the 1000.
"In the second race I again got a great start but Craig (Shirriffs) was in front again. I had consistent times and then just backed off and cruised to the flag happy with second place and the overall for the day.
"After a good day's racing I also managed to win the superbike class for the series and, even without racing the 600cc ZX-6 in the final round, I still finished third overall in the supersport class.
"The weekend marked exactly a year since I'd done my first road race; that was at the final round of this series last year where I was forced to ride the clubmans class.
"So from winning clubmans to winning superbike in one year is something I'm quite proud of."
