The contest to decide the starting line-up for the 2024 FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship Challenge got under way this afternoon with a pair of Qualifying rounds staged at Abensberg in Germany and Debrecen in Hungary.
At stake was a place at Pardubice in the Czech Republic on 4 October for the Challenge event that will determine the four riders who will be given an automatic starting place in the 2025 FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship (SGP).
With four from each Qualifying round going through to Pardubice – where they will be joined by riders who progress via the second set of Qualifying rounds staged this coming Saturday (25 May) in Lonigo in Italy and Žarnovica in Slovakia – competition was intense at both events.
The action kicked off at Abensberg in Germany in the Wack Hofmeister Speedway Stadium where Denmark’s Rasmus Jensen started his afternoon with victory in the opening Heat race and following the first block of racing he was joined on three points by experienced Australian Max Fricke, home hero Kai Huckenbeck and Italy’s Felipe Nicolas Covatti.
Covatti’s hopes of winning a place behind the tapes at Pardubice ended with retirements in his second and fourth Heats as Poland’s Dominik Kubera took his place in the all-important top four with a victory in his second Heat.
Huckenbeck, a three-time national champion who is currently lying eleventh in this year’s SGP series, was in fantastic form and the thirty-one-year-old added three more victories to his scorecard. His sole defeat came in his fifth and final Heat when he finished second to Kubera, but this was easily good enough to secure the top step of the podium and send him to the Czech Republic in October.
The remaining three transfer positions were fiercely contested. Having dropped two points each in their first four Heats, Jensen, Kubera and Fricke – who won an SGP round in 2020 and again in 2022 and was a member of Australia’s victorious team at the 2022 FIM Speedway of Nations – needed to sign off with strong performances and all three rose to the occasion, booking their places in Pardubice with wins in the fifth block.
Tying one point behind Huckenbeck on thirteen, the trio then contested a Run-Off to decide the podium places with Jensen emerging on top from Kubera and Fricke.
Starting two hours behind Abensberg, the Perényi Pál Salakmotor Stadion in Debrecen was the scene of a titanic battle – although the winner in Hungary was, just as it had been in Germany, clear-cut with Poland’s Przemyslaw Pawlicki producing an identical scorecard to Huckenbeck.
After sweeping to victory in his first four Heats, the thirty-two-year-old – who made his SGP debut all the way back in 2010 – was second in his final race of the afternoon, but his accumulated points were sufficient to place him on the top step of the podium and send him to Pardubice.
Getting his afternoon under way with a pair of second-placed finishes, thirty-nine-year-old Brazilian-born Swede Antonio Lindbäck – who has scored twelve podiums including three victories in an SGP career stretching back to 2004 – then put together a run of three successive wins to claim second overall, but behind him it was too close to call with three riders locked together on twelve points following the fifth Heat.
With the final two Qualifying positions on the line, Latvia’s Andzejs Lebedevs, Kacper Woryna from Poland and dynamic Dane Frederik Jakobsen took their places behind the tapes for the deciding Run-Off. Lebedevs, who is contesting the SGPseries this year, made no mistake to take the chequered flag in front for third overall with Woryna edging out Jakobsen for the final place in the Czech Republic in early autumn.
Focus now switches to Lonigo and Žarnovica in five days’ time where the line-up for the FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship Challenge will be finalised.
You can watch the action live from Lonigo and Žarnovica on www.FIM-MOTO.TV
FIM Communications