EUROPEAN PREVIEW - SGP Challenge

Photo courtesy of Steve Hone Photography

Brennan races in what is set to be a fierce event in Pardubice with the top four riders in the meeting securing places in next year’s full Grand Prix schedule.

Seven spots in GP ’25 have already been confirmed – this year’s top six of Bartosz Zmarzlik, Lambert, Fredrik Lindgren, Bewley, Martin Vaculik, Jack Holder and SEC winner Andzejs Lebedevs – with four more to come from the Challenge, and then four nominated places will be allocated.

Brennan finished fifth in his GP Qualifier at Abensberg in May, one place short of making it into the Challenge, but it did put him on the reserve list.

Four of the riders who made it through the qualifiers are amongst the seven who are now already in the GP and therefore do not need to race in the Czech Republic, which has meant good news for Brennan along with Jaimon Lidsey, Frederik Jakobsen, Jacob Thorssell and Brennan, all of whom have been promoted into the line-up.

The GP Challenge is a meeting where one mistake can be disastrous, and it runs over the traditional 20-heat format with no semi-finals or Final.

Current GP riders Dominik Kubera, Max Fricke, Kai Huckenbeck and Jan Kvech are looking to book a return to the series, along with former GP stars Patryk Dudek, Anders Thomsen and Przemyslaw Pawlicki.

With SEC third-placed finisher Kacper Woryna and Australian star Brady Kurtz, one of the in-form riders in the sport at present, it’s set to be one of the most hotly contested GP Challenge meetings in history, and one where predicting four qualifiers is nigh-on impossible.

With the famous Czech Golden Helmet taking place in Pardubice on Sunday, the final action of the PGE Ekstraliga season takes place on Saturday with the league title and third-place play-offs to be decided.

Lublin are overwhelming favourites to win another title having got a significant part of their job done with a 47-43 victory in the first leg of the Final against Wroclaw.

A turnaround from the visitors would be a massive surprise, although they did put in a decent display on their previous visit back in June before the home side ran out 50-40 winners.

Bewley, with 11+1, and Artem Laguta with 13+1 dominated the Wroclaw scoring in that meeting and it will be a final chance this season for Bewley to go up against GP rivals Zmarzlik, Holder, Lindgren and Kubera.

Prior to that, the second leg of the third-place play-off takes place with Torun leading Gorzow 46-43 after an impressive away win last weekend.

Lambert has the opportunity to add another medal to his collection from the season, this time at team level where he has been excellent throughout the campaign, but they will be mindful of the fact that they did lose on aggregate to Gorzow in the play-off quarter-finals, suffering a 42-48 home defeat before still making it through as ‘lucky losers.’

Thomsen scored 13 points in that meeting for Gorzow with Vaculik adding 10, but on that occasion Torun were still without Emil Sayfutdinov due to injury, and they will be confident of a much stronger showing at home.

The FIM European Under-19 Championship was won by Ukranian racer Nazar Parnitskyi, turning the tables on SGP2 champion Wiktor Przyjemski by taking the Euro title in Herxheim.

Parnitskyi won a run-off with Bastian Pedersen to clinch victory with Przyjemski in third place, one point ahead of Mikkel Andersen.

Luke Killeen was the highest placed of the GB contingent as he picked up seven points, scoring in every ride to leave him tenth overall. Luke Harrison and Ashton Boughen were further down the order on three and two points respectively.