HenryW

Eskilstuna does look like the toughest round. The FIM do a draw to allocate national federation places to each round and then it's up to each federation to decide who goes into which round. I know the Danish federation gave the choice to the riders themselves in the order that they finished in their qualifying round. Frederik Jakobsen won that meeting and chose to race in the Eskilstuna round...I wonder if he's now regretting that choice given the field he is up against.

It was a very good performance from the lad. It's nice to see him delivering on the potential he has shown for many years. Hopefully it will continue for him.

Very unlucky for Patrick Hansen. His mechanical failure whilst 2nd in his third race cost him a place in the finals. A bit of a surprise to see Lukas Fienhage go through, I wouldn't have predicted that one...Well done to the lad.

Think back to the odds offered on Tai to be World Champion at the start of that season. He was ranked a complete outsider and I think it's fairly unlikely he would have got the wild card if he wasn't put in as the "token Brit"...He proved he was more than worth the place but that wasn't the general consensus before the season started.

Ana Carrasco has done this during her time in Moto3. Outrageously she had the poor lad topless when none of the grid girls go topless!

Yeah, it's still just about clinging on to existence with a few teams. Most of the Russians race in it including the Laguta brothers. Grigory travels all the way to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan for his home matches!

Emil Sayfutdinov hasn't raced in the Russian league for a couple of seasons...I've no idea if he plans to this year.

Yeah, the meeting on the Friday in Holstebro was supposed to be against Munkebo.

I don't know the rules of the Polish league so was confused by the Kasprzak incident. Sportowefakty's live updates seemed to suggest that it was all 4 back if Kasprzak was fit to race. I'm not sure why a reserve wasn't allowed if that was the case.

Looks like Cookie has sealed his place in the next round. 11 from his first 4 races in Lonigo.

Doesn't he already have a Polish team this season? I thought he was signed with Polonia Piła.

The Riss brothers are racing in the German league on Sunday. Ben Morley replaces Erik and Danny Ayres is in for Mark.

Has the Russian rider been announced? I know Roman Povazhny is there spannering for Nikolaj Busk... maybe they could convince him to pull on his kevlars again

The best list I have seen is the following. 1. Zdenek Holub Czech Republic 2. Piotr Protasiewicz Poland 3. Hynek Stichauer Czech Republic 4. Nicolas Vincetin Italy 5. Arslan Fajzulin Russia 6. Ondrej Smetana Czech Republic 7. Nicolai Klindt Denmark 8. Tobias Kroner Germany 9. Dimitri Berge France 10. Mateusz Szczepaniak Poland 11. ? Russia 12. Thomas Jonasson Sweden 13. Nikolaj Busk Jakobsen Denmark 14. Kim Nilsson Sweden 15. Tobias Busch Germany 16. David Bellego France

Yeah, from the earlier article it seems that Porsing got a late call to race as Berge wasn't going to be able to make it. He flew to Riga but his bikes coming over from Poland didn't make it so he headed home again as he wasn't willing to race on borrowed machinery.

Sounds likely then. She said she was going to be working at 5 GPs and the World Cup. She currently works on MotoGP and used to do the MotoX coverage on tv.I believe she did some live presentation work in the stadium at Cardiff a few years ago.

I saw that Amy Dargan had tweeted that she was joining the sgp team. Will she be doing the pits interviews or does she have another role?

If I'm remembering right, Kovacic had to retire through injury. I think it was a wrist injury which wouldn't heal properly. He was looking a decent prospect until that happened.

An entertaining opening to the season. Erik was looking good and very unlucky with his mechanical problems and an exclusion that seemed harsh from where I was standing...It definitely looked to me like Sam brought him down in his 4th ride. Going into the final I thought Rory was the man to beat as he had been getting better as the night went on, but that just shows what I know As a Monarchs fan it was good to see Josh looking lively. He was unlucky to drop it in his first Dale race with the win in the bag but happily got to celebrate a race win before the night was out.

I've seen this comment made by a few people recently and am genuinely curious...Do Australian riders not currently have to get a visa for Poland to race there if they are racing in the UK? Certainly in other fields of work a visa for the UK would not allow the person to work in Poland, and similarly a visa to work in Poland would not allow them to work in the UK.

Only just noticed this reply. This was the article that I was thinking of: http://sportowefakty.wp.pl/zuzel/642125/oficjalnie-maksymalnie-trzy-ligi-dla-zawodnikow-pge-ekstraligi My Polish doesn't go much beyond saying hello and ordering beer, so I am trusting Google's translation skills and may have misinterpreted what this article was saying. To me it seemed to suggest that riders who had a home nation league which they competed in should list this as number 1 on the list of up to 3 leagues that they race in. It then goes on to say that riders need to get a statement that Polish league takes priority from any foreign leagues at number 2 or 3 on the list, implying that their home nation league would still be allowed to take priority.

I don't think his Danish team will have had to sign anything. I think I read that a rider's home nation league still takes priority over the Extraliga. His Swedish team will have to have signed though...Having said that, they are fairly safe in signing as Poland are unlikely to reschedule any matches for a Swedish league Tuesday.

There was an FIM backed agreement in place until this year. The Polish Extraliga authorities have decided they no longer like that agreement and so have decided to bin it. It's hard to criticise them for asking riders to put their matches first when they are paying the most.

The results for the first meeting can be found here http://m.sportowefakty.wp.pl/zuzel/667316/ligue-national-de-speedway-mc-marmande-ponownie-na-kolanach-show-braci-tresarrie It doesn't really explain what they did with the 250cc guys. They appeared in the same races as others, with Leon Flint winning one of them!

Claremont was 586m according to Wikipedia