It was the nation's fastest females who stole the spotlight at the final round for both the senior men and women at the 2023 New Zealand Motocross Championships in Taupo at the weekend.

It was a sensational double-header weekend, the penultimate round of both separate-but-parallel men's and women's series on the tricky sand-based track on Saturday and the grand finale at the same venue the following day.

However, the three men's classes were settled before the final race of the weekend, pulling the focus squarely onto the women as their battle for supremacy continued until the last lap of the final race on Sunday afternoon.

Mount Maunganui's Roma Edwards had taken her Motul Honda Racing Team CRF250 machine to dominate proceedings at the opening round of their three-round series at Rotorua last month, but then Yamaha rider Amie Roberts, from Hamilton, struck back at Taupo on Saturday to have the day end with these two main title contenders level on the points table.

So they headed into Sunday's final round with everything at stake and just two more nail-biting races to decide who would take the title for 2023.

But the 20-year-old Edwards responded in brilliant fashion, impressively winning both races on Sunday to snatch the title by six points from former champion Roberts.

Mount Maunganui's Roma Edwards had all the answers at the final round of the New Zealand senior motocross nationals. Photo: Andy McGechan, BikesportNZ.com

Opunake's Taylar Rampton eventually clinched third overall in the women's championship, with Rotorua's Mel Patterson Wainuiomata's Ella Burns rounding out the top five.

'This is my first senior New Zealand women's title, and it wasn't as easy as it might have looked. It came down to the last race and I had pressure ion to win that. Amie was riding really well,” says Edwards, who had previously won the national junior women's title in 2018 and the Women's Cup trophy in 2021.

'I was so nervous that I felt I was going to throw up before each race today [Sunday]. But thankfully I got it done. I was so nervous on the last lap. I could see out of the corner of my eye where Amie was on the track and I just kept my focus on the job at hand.

'The Motul Honda Racing Team is great. My mechanic [Darren Lupton] is so good and we work really well together. I'm so blessed to be part of such a professional race team.”

It may have come as no surprise that Edwards prevailed this season – she is, incidentally, already the No.1 female motocross racer in the United Kingdom, having captured the British title last year.

She's made of stern stuff too and, despite her having to shake off serious illness just two weeks prior, sickness bad enough to have her confined to rest and unable to train, and with her energy levels running low over the gruelling weekend of sand racing at Taupo, she was fabulously fast on Sunday afternoon.

'It's hard to say if I will get back to the UK, but I'm hoping to go back in April. I'm getting surgery on an old ankle injury, so I'll have to see how my ankle is after that and make plans from there,” she says.

Meanwhile, on the men's side of the ledger, Mangakino's Maximus Purvis won the MX1 class, Papamoa's Cody Cooper won the MX2 class and West Auckland's Hamish Harwood won the 125cc class title.

The motocross nationals did not go ahead at all last season because of restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, adding further significance to this year's contest.

2023 New Zealand Motocross Championships calendar

Round one: February 12 – South Otago (at Balclutha).

Round two: February 26 – Rotorua (including women's nationals).

Rounds three & four: March 25-26 – Taupo (including women's nationals).