With three priceless permanent places in next year’s blue ribbon FIM Speedway Grand Prix (SGP) series up for grabs, the FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship Challenge this coming Saturday (19 August) at Gislaved in Sweden is guaranteed to be hard-fought.
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It is a highly prestigious event that boasts a proven track record of providing a route into the sport’s elite with Bartosz Zmarzlik and Jason Doyle just two of the FIM SGP Challenge medallists who have gone on to be crowned World Champions with Zmarzlik currently on course to win his fourth title this season.
Following the four Qualifying rounds staged in Slovakia, Italy, Germany and Hungary in late May, the top sixteen riders along with two Swedish wildcard riders will battle it out in the OnePartnerGroup Arena, the nation’s oldest Speedway track still in use, over a twenty-Heat programme.
In total eleven different nations will be represented, but there is just one shared goal – to race to one of the coveted three places behind the tapes in the 2024 SGP series.
The first riders to earn their starting positions in Gislaved via a top-four finish in Zarnovica in Slovakia were Martin Vaculik, Poland’s Szymon Woźniak, Luke Becker from the USA and dynamic Dane Frederik Jakobsen with Vaculik making the most of home advantage to top the podium thanks to four wins and a second-placed finish.
Home advantage also favoured Nicolas Covatti and Michele Castagna who made the cut at the Italian Qualifier at Lonigo along with Piotr Pawlicki from Poland and the Czech Republic’s Jan Kvech.
Australia’s Jason Doyle, the 2017 FIM SGP World Champion, booked his place at Gislaved with three wins and two runner-up finishes at his Qualifier at Abensberg in Germany alongside Poland’s Przemysław Pawlicki, Dimitri Bergé from France and current FIM Long Track World Championship contender Martin Smolinski from Germany.
The fourth and final Qualifying round was staged at Debrecen in Hungary where Australian Jack Holder, Latvia’s Andzejs Lebedevs, Michael Jepsen Jensen from Denmark and Sweden’s Jacob Thorssell all made the cut.
These sixteen riders will be joined in Sweden by home heroes Oliver Berntzon and Philip Hellström-Bängs.
Because of the reward that a podium finish on Saturday will bring, a number of riders already competing in this year’s SGP series contested the Qualifiers as extra insurance, but only two progressed to Saturday’s deciding races at Gislaved.
On current form, the rider everyone will need to beat is thirty-three-year-old Vaculik who lies third in the SGP title chase following the opening seven rounds with a win a two further podium finishes so far this season.
However, he is in good company with Holder also racing to three SGP podium finishes this year – although the twenty-seven-year-old underwent hand surgery at the start of the month so a question mark hangs over his attendance in Gislaved.
FIM Communications