With the four 2024 FIM Speedway Grand Prix Qualifying heats now all completed, the riders who will contest the Challenge event in Gislaved, Sweden, on Saturday 19 August have been decided.
Races in Slovakia and Italy on Saturday (27 May) and in Germany and Hungary today (29 May) reduced the initial entry of sixty-four riders down to sixteen who will head to Sweden with the sole aim of being among the top-three to earn a place in next season’s elite FIM Speedway Grand Prix series.
Zarnovica in Slovakia got the action started on Saturday afternoon with Polish riders Bartosz Smektala and Szymon Woźniak along with Australia’s Max Fricke and Luke Becker from the USA sharing the lead following the first block of four Heats.
After following Woźniak home in his opening Heat, Slovakia’s Martin Vaculik barely put a wheel wrong for the remainder of the meeting. The thirty-three-year-old former European Champion and current SGP competitor was in impressive form and his run of four wins guaranteed a place at the Challenge event.
Adding another two wins and two runner-up finishes to his total, Woźniak went through in second, but a three-way tie for third between Becker, Frederik Jakobsen from Denmark and Britain’s Robert Lambert – another SGP rider – meant a run-off was needed to determine the final two riders progressing to the next stage.
It was Becker who grabbed the win and the last podium position with Jakobsen’s fourth place good enough for the final transfer slot.
Later that evening it was the turn of Lonigo in Italy where the Santa Marina Stadium, which only reopened late last year after closing at the end of 2018, hosted a crowd of three-and-a-half-thousand fans.
On a night where no one rider was able to dominate it was Poland’s Piotr Pawlicki who raced to the top step of the podium, but it was a hard-fought victory with his three wins and two second-placed finishes giving him a narrow one-point advantage ahead of a three-way tie for second.
Italy’s Nicolas Covatti needed the win in his fifth and final Heat to earn a place in the run-off alongside Jan Kvech from Poland and Italy’s Michele Castagna whose hometown of Arzignano is less than twenty kilometres north of Lonigo.
With all three riders already assured of a place at the Challenge event, pride was at stake and six-time Italian Champion Covatti rose to the occasion to cross the line first to take second on the night ahead of twenty-one-year-old Kvech, last year’s SGP2 runner-up, who put in a typically brave performance and fought for every point.
Australia’s Jaimon Lidsey won his first two Heats and could also have been in contention, but his challenge was effectively ended when he was disqualified from his fourth Heat when he made a mistake that caused two riders to fall.
Fast forward two days and it was the turn of Abensberg in south-east Germany to stage a Qualifying round and, in keeping with the opening two events, it was tight at the top.
The Czech Republic’s Eduard Krcmar, German teenager Norick Blödorn, Australia’s Jason Doyle and British rider Chris ‘Bomber’ Harris all got off to winning starts in their first Heats, but only Doyle – who currently sits third in the SGP points table after two rounds – could maintain his form.
A further two wins backed up by a pair of second-placed finishes saw the thirty-seven-year-old 2017 SGP World Champion through to the Challenge event with a one-point margin of victory over Poland’s Przemysław Pawlicki, Dimitri Bergé from France and home hero Martin Smolinski who then faced a three-rider run-off to decide the remaining podium positions.
As was the case in Lonigo two days earlier, all three had already booked their places at Gislaved although when the tapes went up none of them were keeping anything in reserve and after four flat-out laps it was Pawlicki who took the win from Bergé and Smolinski.
Starting slightly later in Debrecen in Hungary, the remaining four Qualification places went all the way down to the fifth and final block of Heats and the three podium positions were only decided after a dramatic run-off.
Following the Heat races, Australian Jack Holder was tied at the top with Latvia’s Andzejs Lebedevs and Michael Jepsen Jensen from Denmark who were locked together on thirteen points each with Holder and Jensen both claiming three Heat wins and two seconds while Lebedevs had four wins and a third.
Holder, who has already been on an SGP podium this season with second in Warsaw earlier this month, asserted his authority to take victory in the run-off and claim the top step of the podium ahead of Lebedevs with Jensen retiring and ending the day in third.
The final place at Gislaved was claimed by twenty-nine-year-old Jacob Thorssell from Sweden.
The sixteen qualified riders will head to the Challenge event in Gislaved, Sweden, on Saturday 19 August.
FIM Communications