FOGO FIM SPEEDWAY UNDER 21 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
FINAL 1 – LUBLIN, POLAND 22ND JUNE 2019
Gleb Chugunov was the winner of the first round of this year’s FOGO FIM Under 21 World Championship after an eventful meeting in Lublin. Having made steady progress through the qualifying stages he won both his semi-final and the Final to take his total points to 17 and a position as joint leader going into the next round.
Second in the Final was current champion Bartosz Smektala who, after slow start in the elimination stages raised his total to 13 points. Robert Lambert was third taking advantage of a mistake by Dominik Kubera to steal a place on the podium. Kubera, something of a veteran on his third appearance in this championship, had otherwise looked impressive and his 17 points makes him joint leader with Chugunov.
A major surprise was the elimination of former champion Maksym Drabik who had posted an unbeaten 15 points in the qualifiers. Drabik’s contribution came to an end when he found himself in traffic on the first bend of his semi-final and although he passed Jaimon Lidsey he was unable to make any impression on the leading pair and missed his chance of a place in the final.
Heat 16 was a critical race for some of the top scorers with Lidsey, Lambert, Chugunov and Drabik all in contention. At the first attempt with Lambert chasing Chugunov the race was stopped after Lidsey fell, then in the rerun Lambert, again chasing the Russian, also found a rough spot and came off. Drabik’s good fortune continued when he comfortably beat Chugunov at the third attempt.
Jaimon Lidsey made a promising start to his challenge winning his first race and despite that fall in Heat 16 made the semi-final stage. The Danish squad was disappointing however and despite the presence of multi champion Hans Nielsen in the pits, their best performance was the eight points collected by Jonas Jeppesen.
Leading scores after Final 1:
1. Gleb Chugunov (Russia) 17 points
2. Dominik Kubera (Poland) 17
3. Maksym Drabik (Poland) 16
4. Robert Lambert (Great Britain) 14
5. Bartosz Smektala (Poland) 13
6. Wiktor Lampart (Poland) 11
7. Jaimon Lidsey (Australia) 8
8. Jan Kvech (Czech Republic) 8
9. Jonas Jeppesen (Denmark) 8
There is a pause in the competition until the second final is held in Gustrow, Germany on 14th September but before then we can look forward to the Under 21 Team World Championship to be held in Mancheser on 12th July.
FIM Communications