Belle Vue began their quest for Speedway’s newest title with a third place in the opening round of the Premiership Pairs at Peterborough on Monday night.
The new competition which involves all six Premiership teams across six rounds throughout the season, got underway this week with Belle Vue representatives Max Fricke, Brady Kurtz and Tom Brennan just missing out on qualification for the final race when Max Fricke fell in the penultimate heat to bow out at the semi-final stage.
That allowed King’s Lynn to progress to the final to face meeting leaders Sheffield, and the Norfolk pair of Josh Pickering and Richard Lawson took the spoils 5-4 when Sheffield’s Adam Ellis was disqualified after coming down in a clash with Lawson.
Belle Vue opened the series with a 5-4 win over Ipswich in heat 1, and they were the early leaders after two races each when Fricke and Kurtz took a 6-3 over home side Peterborough.
With the rules requiring the young British Rising Star rider to take at least one outing during the meeting, Aces boss Mark Lemon chose to introduce Tom Brennan for the clash with Wolverhampton, and although Brennan could make no impression on the Wolves’ top two, Fricke won the race to limit the damage to a 4-5 reversal as the Aces moved on to 15 points.
But Belle Vue’s hopes of topping the scorecharts and qualifying directly for the final race were dashed in heat 11 when they met Sheffield.
A slight mistake from Kurtz allowed Ellis through for third place, and although Fricke tried everything to get past Jack Holder in front, he could find no way through and Sheffield won the heat 6-3 on their way to topping the leaderboard and qualifying for the final race.
With King’s Lynn still having to play their Rising Star, the Aces took a 6-3 in their last qualifying race to finish second overall, booking a place in the semi-final race with a rematch against third-placed King’s Lynn.
As Pickering led from the start with Kurtz in pursuit, teammate Fricke just needed to get into third place to give the Aces a 5-4 win under the 4,3,2,0 scoring system.
But as Fricke tried his move around the outside of the fourth bend he hit the fence and came down, gifting King’s Lynn passage through to the final, where they went on to take victory over Sheffield.
Third place gives the Aces 6 series points, whilst King’s Lynn take 12 for the win. Sheffield have 8, Wolverhampton 4, Ipswich 2, and Peterborough 0.
The series moves on to Ipswich in June and finishes with the final round at Belle Vue’s National Stadium in September.
Belle Vue travel to local rivals Sheffield tonight (Thursday) for a Premiership fixture, with Matej Zagar expected to be back fit after missing the two Premiership meetings against King’s Lynn through injury.
However Jye Etheridge is still sidelined with a collarbone injury and the Aces utilise the Rider Replacement facility in his place.
Action returns the the National Stadium tomorrow (Friday) when the Belle Vue Colts play host to Edinburgh’s Armadale Devils.
A slight rejigging of the Colts line-up sees Harry McGurk taking over in the No.1 racejacket following the release of the new averages, whilst Jack Smith swaps places with him, moving to No.5
Picture by Ian Charles
Latics Diary: Mellon and Latics faithful on the same wavelength
New Year's Day football round-up: Shakers hit Celtic for six
Nash finish year in style
