Crump endures a tough run at wet Swedish GP then leads Wroclaw to victory the following night
Reigning Speedway World Champion Jason Crump endured a tough night of racing on an extremely wet track at the Swedish Speedway Grand Prix at Gothenburg’s Ullevi Stadium on Saturday night finishing ninth overall.
Crump took 7 points from the event and just missed out on a spot in the semi finals after gallantly fighting back to win his final two heat races.
With the laying of warm, dry dirt on wet track surfaces a standard process in European speedway events Crump’s team were left searching for answers when his bike didn’t respond as predicted.
“After so many years of racing of in Europe it is a situation we are very familiar with and we made the same basic changes that the rest of the grid would have also made,” Crump explained.
“It is a given, that is what you do when the dirt goes down but for some bizarre reason the changes actually did the opposite of what we expected them to do.
The first two heats were no fun at all, the bike was near unridable and I was fighting to keep it upright.
“In the end the tight racing schedule actually worked in our favour as there wasn’t enough time to properly analyze the setup issues between races so we decided to grin and bear it.
“By the start of my third heat the track was drying out and the surface was starting to resemble what it was in practice,” he continued.
Crump now sits second in the World Championship standings only four points behind his Wroclaw teammate, Dane, Kenneth Bjerre.
“Although it was a disappointing night and we should have come away with a strong championship lead in hindsight, the end result could have been a lot worse.
The Australian bounced back from his disappointing Grand Prix result by inspiring Wroclaw to a 48-42 victory at home to Bydgoszcz on Sunday afternoon. Crump notched 17 points from six rides at the Olympic Stadium and was only beaten by Russian Emil Sayfutdinov in heat four.
“I was extremely pleased with Sunday afternoon’s Polish league event for a number of reasons,” Crump continued.
“Firstly it was good to confirm to myself that there was a problem with the bike the night before and not my riding.
“Secondly some of the stuff we learnt from those Grand Prix races helped us finally get a good handle on the Olympic Stadium track. It was quite unsettling for me to not have a good grasp on our home circuit but we are there now, and it was a great afternoon of racing,” he added.
Crump will now head back to Sweden for the third round of the Swedish League where he will line-up for Vetlanda when they take on Dackarna tomorrow.
Top Ten Speedway Grand Prix Word Championship Standings after Round 2 of 11
1. Kenneth Bjerre, Denmark, 30pts
2. Jason Crump, Australia, 26pts
3. Jaroslaw Hampel, Poland 24pts
4. Tomasz Gollob, Poland 22pts
5. Emil Sayfutdinov, Russia 22pts
6. Chris Holder, Australia 19pts
7. Greg Hancock, USA 18pts
8. Andreas Jonsson, Sweden 17pts
9. Nicki Pedersen, Denmark 17pts
10. Rune Holta, Poland, 16pts
