The SEC Challenge tournament was held in Pardubice in Czech Republic and the stake was 5 places in the final rounds of this year's Individual European Championship. This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was no possibility to make the qualifying rounds, fortunately the organizers were able to do at least one Challenge meeting.
The competition included 16 riders, who had a great chance of being promoted to the Speedway Euro Champinship series. The beginning was down to Timo Lahti and Dan Bewley. The Finn and the Briton were the only riders with both wins. Next series made some bigger changes in the general classification.
After 16 heats, Sergey Logachev was in the first place and Andzejs Lebedevs and Dan Bewley were behind him. Patryk Dudek fought for the promotion all the time and the other Pole Jakub Jamrog, who touched the tape in his first heat decreased his chances in that moment. The last series of starts was going to bring decisive results.
After all 20 heats Dan Bewley and Patryk Dudek collected 12 points. Behind them with 11 were Andzejs Lebedevs and Sergey Logachev and these four riders were already sure of their promotion to the Speedway Euro Championship series. Timo Lahti and Patrick Hansen were going to fight for the last place in the additional heat – the representative of Denmark was better and he took the 5th and last place, which gave him the promotion to the final rounds of the Individual European Championship. At the end, two more heats were held for the order on the final podium. In them Patryk Dudek defeated Dan Bewley and Sergey Logachev turned out to be better than Andzejs Lebedevs. So finally Dudek won the competition, ahead of Bewley and Logachev.
The top five riders joined Robert Lambert, Leon Madsen, Mikkel Michelsen, Bartosz Smektala and Nicki Pedersen and the last five regular participants of the Speedway Euro Championship 2021 will be selected by the organizers, who will grant them “wild cards”.
Results:
1. Patryk Dudek (Poland) 12+3 (2,2,3,2,3)
2. Dan Bewley (Great Britain) 12+2 (3,3,1,2,3)
3. Sergey Logachev (Russia) 11+3 (2,3,2,3,1)
4. Andzejs Lebedevs (Latvia) 11+2 (0,3,3,3,2)
5. Patrick Hansen (Denmark) 10+3 (3,1,2,2,2)
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6. Timo Lahti (Finland) 10+2 (3,3,1,0,3)
7. Vadim Tarasenko (Russia) 9 (1,1,3,1,3)
8. Jacob Thorssell (Sweden) 8 (3,0,3,1,1)
9. Pontus Aspgren (Sweden) 8 (1,2,2,1,2)
10. David Bellego (France) 7 (1,2,1,3,0)
11. Jakub Jamrog (Poland) 7 (T,1,2,3,1)
12. Nicolas Covatti (Italy) 6 (2,0,0,2,2)
13. Erik Riss (Germany) 4 (2,0,0,1,1)
14. Oleksandr Loktaev (Ukraine) 3 (EX,2,1,0,0)
15. Josef Franc (Czech Republic) 1 (0,1,0,0,R)
16. Eduard Krčmář (Czech Republic) 1 (1)
17. Matic Ivačič (Slovenia) 0 (0,0,0,0,0)
18. Hynek Štichauer (Czech Republic) DNS
