Former AMA pro Brett Metcalfe will race the last five rounds of the Australian Nationals on a Monster Energy Kawasaki after replacing Russian ex-GP star Aleksandr Tonkov who has left the team.

Metcalfe, who had been on a privateer KTM, said: “I haven’t ridden the current KX450F model so I’m excited to learn about the improvements and how they are going to benefit me. The challenge will be getting up to race speed as quick as we can and from there we will contend for race wins. In that sense the competition has some momentum under their wings and I’ll be playing catch up, but I’ll have a professional race team behind me so I’m confident that I will pull some good results by the end of the season.”

Australian Metcalfe raced some rounds of the Australian Nationals in 2015 and 2016 as well as the Canadian championship. He raced AMA Nationals for 12 years for Geico Honda, Por Circuit Kawasaki and the factory Suzuki team.