EUROPEAN PREVIEW - SGP Cardiff

Image courtesy of Taylor Lanning Photography

Although Tai Woffinden misses the Principality Stadium showpiece event due to injury, home fans still have three riders to support in the main meeting, whilst two youngsters also hope to get a chance on the big night.

Dan Bewley and Robert Lambert are of course the series regulars, and both will head to Wales believing they have a realistic chance of victory.

Bewley enjoyed an unforgettable breakthrough win in 2022, becoming the first British rider to take gold at Cardiff since Chris Harris in 2007, and whilst Lambert is still yet to win a GP, the evidence from the first half of the season suggests it really shouldn’t be too far away.

Lambert was on a consistent run of semi-final and Final appearances until a disastrous night in Gorzow saw him score just three GP points, but he is firmly still in the top six of the standings.

The Torun racer has 72 points from six rounds which currently places him fifth, just five points off second placed Jack Holder with Mikkel Michelsen and Fredrik Lindgren also just ahead of him.

Martin Vaculik completes the top six on 65, and Lambert has a comfortable gap of 18 points to Dominik Kubera – whilst at the very top of the list, they are all chasing Bartosz Zmarzlik who has 104 points, 27 more than Holder, with the Pole having made all six Finals so far.

Bewley currently sits outside the top sixth in ninth place on 49 points, 16 behind Vaculik, with his best result so far being 11 points in Warsaw. He also made the semi-finals in Landshut and Malilla.

The third British contender in the full meeting is Tom Brennan, who appears as Wild Card having finished third in the British Final behind Bewley and Woffinden at Belle Vue in June.

He has previously appeared as a track reserve, taking three rides and scoring one championship point in 2022, and a historical note is that his stepfather is Martin Dugard who famously won the British Grand Prix as a Wild Card at Coventry in 2000, one year before the event moved to Cardiff.

Track reserves on this occasion are Sam Hagon (Dugard’s nephew) and Leon Flint, who finished first and second in the British Under-21 Final at Glasgow earlier in the season.

Cardiff hosts the British GP for the 22^nd time, missing out only in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 since it first joined the calendar in 2021 – meaning now only the Marketa Stadium in Prague has hosted more GP rounds.

Zmarzlik has a superb record of consistency in Cardiff, having reached the last six Finals there, and he was the winner back in 2018.

Other members of the current field to have previous wins at the Principality Stadium to their name, along with Zmarzlik and Bewley, are Leon Madsen (2019) and Martin Vaculik (2023), whilst the top all-time winners in Cardiff are GP greats Greg Hancock and Jason Crump, who both won there on three occasions.

Extra points are available in this event as the second Sprint Race takes place on Friday, following on from the previous running of this format in Warsaw where Bewley took the four points on offer.

The PGE Ekstraliga takes a break this weekend ahead of the play-offs, but there is action in the two lower divisions.
The quarter finals in Metalkas 2. Ekstraliga begin on Saturday with Krosno hosting Rybnik, a meeting which was close when they met last month as the home side edged a 47-43 victory.

League leaders Ostrow head to Lodz on Sunday and will be strongly fancied to make it through the tie, and they will have the confidence of a 51-39 win on their previous visit in July.

Meanwhile the other first leg tie features Poznan at home to Bydgoszcz, a meeting which ended 48-42 back in June.

In the National Speedway League play-offs, Pila host Tarnow on Saturday with the meeting to take place at Bydgoszcz.

But the ‘home’ side will have to do without Adam Ellis who suffered concussion in a crash at Ipswich on Thursday during the Witches’ home defeat to Leicester.

The other semi-final features the leaders Gniezno, who travel to Opole on Sunday and have Kyle Howarth in their line-up for the meeting.