SPEEDWAY GP HEATS UP WITH WOFFY IN CHARGE

Jul 012018

The Speedway GP series roared back into action in supercharged fashion this weekend and it was man of the moment Tai Woffinden who lit up the #DanishSGP with a wheel-perfect display to take a 10-point lead in the championship.

After a six-week break the series got back underway in the sleepy Danish town of Horsens, but on Saturday night it got a rude awakening with the 16 best riders in the world going bar-to-bar over 23 action-packed races.

If you want to wake somewhere up, take four 500cc machines with no brakes or gears and throw them around a 300-metre oval for four laps. That’s exactly the treatment that Horsens got and there wasn’t a fan in the house who didn’t leave the CASA Arena feeling like they got their money’s worth.

With a run of three GP’s in four weeks coming up it was a big chance for all the riders to stamp their marker on the series but it was British shredder Woffinden who put his cards on the table with his second event win in only three rounds.

It wasn’t easy and the two-time Champ was pushed all the way by a man with double that amount, the evergreen Greg Hancock, who had his best night of the season so far and ended up in 3rdplace with 16 points.

Russian hero Artem Laguta edged out Greg for 2nd, squeezing him out on the first turn in a nerve-wracking final race, but it’s a return to the podium for GH and a surefire sign that he means business again in 2018.

Hancock’s HHGP team-mate Chris Holder also had a better night, scoring 9 points before losing out in his semi-final but there were more positives than negatives for the Aussie, who looks like he’s getting back to his best.

We caught up with the boys after a long, tough but ultimately successful night of racing;

Tai Woffinden

“I actually went on holiday for a week before this event and it was a bit strange because I was trying to get myself ready and it was a different approach to normal, but I guess it worked!

“I felt fast early on but it was after my second race that I started to feel good, I knew I had the pace to be up there but then I had a little slide off and tweaked my knee. I tried to keep moving it throughout the night and it got better, then we made a little change to the set-up and it worked really well, from then on we were killin’ it!

“The track was tough and very technical tonight, it got a bit gnarly and separated the men from the boys a little bit because it was rough. It wasn’t easy to pass on so you had to make sure you got the dirt line first and stayed there, once you got into the dirt you were away.

“It’s only three rounds in so I’m not going to get carried away, it’s early in the season so there’s no point looking too far ahead. We’ve got a good run of GP’s now and I just want to bang in as many points as possible, it’s all about piling them up and hopefully towards the end of the year I’ll be where I want to be.”

Greg Hancock

“I felt really good tonight, I said beforehand that I hoped I’d ironed out a few issues that had been affecting the bikes and it turns out that we did so I’m really stoked with how the night went.

“I was making starts and I felt like I had the speed all night, it’s the best I’ve felt in a GP in a long time and now I know that the bikes are working great so it’s just down to me to put them into the right places on the track. It’s nice to be back on the podium and I feel like we’ve got some momentum now so it’s just about getting back out there and scoring some points.

“A few people have asked me why I took gate four in the final but I’d made a couple of good ones from there already and I knew that if I could get the jump and be level with Tai in the first corner that I had a good chance, but he just made a great start and I couldn’t quite get there. It’s all positive for me though and I’m looking ahead now knowing I can do what I want to do.”

Chris Holder

“It was much better tonight but I’m a bit disappointed with how the semi-final went. When you get there you want to make sure you go on and make the final so it’s a bit gutting but I’m happy overall.

“I felt good on the bike and I was pretty quick but as the track changed we made a few adjustments and it just didn’t work at all, so there’s probably a lesson there for next time. It’s going in the right direction so hopefully next time out I can go one further.”