Image: Foremost Media.

Returning to the gates for Sunday’s seventh Penrite ProMX round was ‘a weight off the shoulders’ for former MX1 national champion Aaron Tanti, with a pair of seventh-place finishes and P7 overall providing a place to build from leaving Toowoomba.

The Monster Energy CDR Yamaha recruit experienced a frightening fall in the pre-season, and has subsequently missed the majority of this year while recovering from a fractured C1 vertebra.

With he and the team targeting a return for the final two ProMX rounds, the 29-year-old notched a consistent day on a challenging rain-soaked Echo Valley circuit, posting the fifth fastest time in Superpole, and capturing two seventh-place finishes across each moto.

“This one was definitely a tricky one to come back to, with not much prep time on the bike,” Tanti told MotoOnline. “I felt good and did what I needed to do, and I think I got better as the day went on, but all in all, we did what we needed, and that was to get gate drops.

“I didn’t know how I was going to feel doing the motos at full race intensity, so it is a weight off the shoulders to get this one out of the way.”

Tanti is using the remaining ProMX rounds as preparation for the upcoming Australian Supercross Championship (AUSX), and will transition to the tighter, more technical discipline directly after Queensland Moto Park this weekend. In addition, banking solid results throughout the remainder of the year will help him lock in a deal for 2026.

“The whole reason for jumping back in for these final ProMX rounds was to get my speed up and ready for supercross, so for me, after QMP it’ll be a transition straight to that,” he continued. “That’s our main focus, so it won’t hurt to get an extra few weeks of prep time in.

“We haven’t signed anything for 2026 yet – there are definitely options – but my hope is to stay with CDR. I feel like a lot of the top riders are locked up at the moment, so there might only be a couple of us that are still around, but I think for a lot of people, they haven’t seen me race in a long time, so it’s important to be out there.”