Image: Foremost Media.

An extended month-long break between ProMX rounds will benefit Honda Racing signing Ryder Kingsford entering Canberra this weekend, continuing to recover from a damaging off-season shoulder injury that has limited his preparations on the CRF250R.

The current AUSX SX2 champion made a head-turning switch from Monster Energy Yamalube Yamaha to Honda at the end of last year, lured by the opportunity to make select appearances in the United States with Quad Lock Honda.

Plans for Kingsford to debut in Monster Energy Supercross in January were halted when he was injured just days before being scheduled to travel to America, which instead placed him in a race against time for Wonthaggi’s opening round of ProMX alongside rookie brother Kayd Kingsford and new red plate-holder Alex Larwood.

After going 6-9 for sixth overall in MX2 on debut with Honda, 21-year-old Kingsford is confident that added time to acclimatise to the Honda should result in an improved performance on Sunday.

“It’s been a little bit of a blessing in disguise having nearly a month off since the first round,” Kingsford told MotoOnline. “Obviously on paper, P6 doesn’t look too bad, but it definitely wasn’t the performance that I wanted to put in myself.

“I had a pretty decent list of injuries that I sustained in the off-season at the very beginning – that put me off the bike for quite a decent amount of time. I’ve been able to do some good amount of testing [since Wonthaggi] and log a lot of laps, so it’s all sort of trending in the right direction at the moment.”

Still adapting to his new team and Honda equipment, which have collectively claimed the past five MX2 titles outdoors with Brodie Connolly (2025/2024), Wilson Todd (2023/2022) and Kyle Webster (2021), Kingsford is gradually gaining comfort following a career-long association with Yamaha.

“It’s the first time in my career that I’ve had to change an OEM, so it’s definitely – I mean, at the moment – it’s still a bit of a challenge,” he continued. “I’m still adapting and learning new things, because you spend so much time on one bike where you just get so used to it and you know what it’s gonna do everywhere and you get your base settings, so from there you don’t have to do a lot of testing.

“For me now, it’s a whole new environment, a new bike. I felt like when I first got on it and I did the first three weeks on supercross, I actually felt like I adapted to it really good and I felt really comfortable. Obviously, it’s been a lot more of a challenge since my injury, balancing trying to develop a bike as well as working on my health, so yeah, injuries aside, I definitely like the bike.

“Kayd has helped me quite a lot. He’s had some time to develop the bike and it’s been good for me – I’ve actually been able to jump on his bike on multiple occasions on different tracks and I’m able to get a feel of how his bike is and what it does in certain areas.”

Kingsford’s big-picture plan is to head overseas as soon as the opportunity arises, with Honda Racing’s connection to the Quad Lock team – both under the ownership of Yarrive Konsky – placing him in a strong position to make the leap if he can continue to perform at home. It was his injury that delayed plans directly following his AUSX title win last year.

“My move to Honda was a bit of a hybrid deal,” he explained. “I was going to be able to go to the States and race a handful of races there at the beginning of this year, so it wasn’t much of an off-season. I think I took three days off after Adelaide and then after that I was on the red machine riding, because I was planning on going over to America and racing.

“That was that was the plan and unfortunately, it was actually about five days before I was supposed to jet out that I honestly had just a small crash in a corner. I awkwardly landed on my arm and I ended up dislocating and breaking my shoulder in three different spots, as well as taking a fairly big chunk out of my elbow. It was a bummer, but we have moved on now.”