The fight for a coveted place behind the tapes at the 2025 FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship (SGP) gets under way in just a few days’ time when a series of Qualifying rounds are staged in Abensberg in Germany and Debrecen in Hungary this coming Monday (20 May) and in Lonigo in Italy and Žarnovica in Slovakia the following Saturday (25 May).
A total of seventy-two competitors will line up across the four events with the top four riders from each transferring to the FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championship Challenge event at Pardubice in the Czech Republic on 4 October.
In the event of no Czech riders progressing via the Qualifying rounds, only the top three finishers from Žarnovica will go through and the final place at the Challenge will be filled by a Czech wild card. The top four riders in Pardubice – increased from three in 2023 – will earn their places among the elite riders in the 2025 SGP series.
With only the top six from this year’s SGP series gaining a guaranteed automatic place in the 2025 line-up, the Challenge has once again attracted a high-class entry with a number of current SGP stars who view the event as additional insurance for the following season opting to compete.
Winner of the Challenge in 2023 that was held in Gislaved in Sweden, Australia’s Jason Doyle is currently leading the 2024 SGP standings after two rounds with Slovakian Martin Vaculik and Poland’s Szymon Wozniak – who completed the Challenge podium last year – both holding down positions inside the top ten.
Among the 2024 SGP riders taking to the shale on Monday is Andzejs Lebedevs who has so far achieved a season-best finish of twelfth which came at the second round of the championship in Warsaw in Poland in the middle of May. The Latvian will contest the qualifying round in Debrecen where riders he will line up against include Frederik Jakobsen from Denmark, Sweden’s Jacob Thorssell and Polish racer Przemyslaw Pawlicki who all made it through to last year’s Challenge event before being eliminated.
The Qualifying rounds are always a truly international occasion and this year’s entry for Debrecen alone features competitors from three continents and thirteen different nations.
Monday’s action kicks off in the Wack Hofmeister Speedway Stadium, Abensberg, with the first Heat scheduled for 14:00 local time. Racing in the Perényi Pál Salakmotor Stadion in Debrecen is scheduled to start at 16:00 local time.
You can watch the action live from Abensberg, Lonigo and Žarnovica on FIM-MOTO.TV. STREAM THE ACTION LIVE HERE!