EUROPEAN PREVIEW - SGP Wroclaw

Image courtesy of Steve Hone Photography

Bewley memorably won back-to-back GPs back in 2022 and now he looks to repeat the feat as the series returns to the Olympic Stadium after an absence of one year as the venue hosted the World Cup last season.

A clean sweep in Cardiff – Bewley also won the Sprint Race the day before the GP – means he is now right back in contention for a top six finish overall, as he is just two points behind Martin Vaculik with four GPs remaining.

Meanwhile in the title fight itself Robert Lambert leads the chasing pack behind leader Bartosz Zmarzlik, who saw his advantage trimmed when he missed out on the semi-finals at the Principality Stadium.

Lambert, who finished runner-up to Bewley in his home GP, is 21 points behind Zmarzlik with Fredrik Lindgren, Jack Holder and Mikkel Michelsen hot on his heels.

Wroclaw will be staging a GP for the 16^th time, having hosted the first-ever event back in 1995, and after a major rebuild they returned to the calendar in 2019.

Zmarzlik leads the list of previous winners at Wroclaw, having triumphed on three occasions at the venue, including both rounds of the double header in 2021.

Speedway legends Tomasz Gollob and Tony Rickardsson have both taken two GP wins at Wroclaw, whilst from the current field Maciej Janowski – who continues to substitute for the injured Tai Woffinden – won the second round of the 2020 double header and is another home rider.

Attention then switches to the play-off action in Poland with all three PGE Ekstraliga second leg quarter-finals taking place on Sunday.

Champions Lublin are first up and will be expected to comfortably make into the last four as they hold a 54-35 lead over Zielona Gora as they head back to their home track.

Greater jeopardy appears to be on the fixture between Grudziadz and Wroclaw, where Bewley will hope to take the visitors into the semi-finals and they travel with a 50-40 lead.

Intriguingly, when the sides met in early July it was a 51-39 win for Grudziadz, and a repeat performance on Sunday would see them continue to enjoy their best-ever run.

Elsewhere Lambert will be in action for Torun at Gorzow, and the odds are against them as they are 48-42 down from the home leg and they are still without Emil Sayfutdinov.

But there is still an incentive to score as many points as possible with a semi-final place available to the ‘lucky losers’, who are likely to come from the last two quarter-finals.

In Metalkas 2. Ekstraliga, the semi-finals get underway this weekend with the top two in the regular league table meeting as Bydgoszcz host Ostrow on Sunday.

Bydgoszcz had to rely on the ‘lucky loser’ berth to make it this far after a narrow defeat to Poznan in the last round, whilst the first leg of the Poznan/Rybnik semi-final takes place on Saturday afternoon.

Ironically the corresponding fixtures this season for both semi-finals were back in Round 1 of regular campaign, where Rybnik won 48-42 at Poznan and Bydgoszcz were 51-38 winners over Ostrow.

And also on Sunday, the second leg of the National Speedway League semi-final between Gniezno and Opole takes place, with the home side taking a two-point lead into the meeting after a narrow win at Opole in the first leg.