A brief history of the FIM Flat Track World Championship

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When the chequered flag falls on the Grand Final at the sixth and deciding round of the 2024 FIM Flat Track World Championship powered by Anlas, Kineo, Blackburst and HKC Koopmann today (Saturday 12 October) in the Perényi Pál Salakmotor Stadion at Debrecen in Hungary it will mark the conclusion of the series and the fourteenth season.

With the FIM celebrating its one-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary this year, Flat Track is a relative newcomer to the FIM Family, but in just a short space of time the sport has made a major impact and is deservedly writing its own entry into the history books of motorcycle sport’s global governing body.

Initially run as the FIM Flat Track Cup, the first-ever winner in that inaugural 2011 season was Marco Belli from Varese in northern Italy near the border with Switzerland. Nicknamed ‘The Professor’, Belli founded a school to teach the highly-specialised discipline and has won titles in Europe and America.

It was the start of a wave of Italian dominance that was ridden by Fabrizio Vesprini for the next two years before his teenaged compatriot Francesco Cecchini took over. Cecchini, who would go on to run his own team in the Moto3 class of the Italian CIV domestic road racing series, dominated the sport for the next six years.

Flat Track achieved full FIM World Championship status in 2020 and following nine years of flying above the podium, the green, white and red of the Italian Tricolour was finally lowered and replaced by the blue and white of the Finnish flag as Lasse Kurvinen snatched the title from Cecchini at a dramatic final round at Boves-Cuneo in Italy.

Kurvinen, who heads into Debrecen tomorrow in contention for the bronze medal, made it back-to-back titles in 2021 when he was a constant presence on the podium before his career aspirations took the now forty-five-year-old in a different direction and to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean for the next two years.

After finishing fourth in 2021, it was Gerard Bailo who stepped up to fill the vacuum created by Kurvinen’s departure. A former international Supermoto front-runner, the swift Spaniard went head-to-head with Italy’s Matteo Boncinelli throughout 2022, trading wins and second places until the championship went down to the wire at a rain-lashed Boves-Cuneo in early October.

Boncinelli – who currently sits sixth in the 2024 standings, one place ahead of Bailo – started the day as championship leader, though an early crash put him out of the running and his Spanish rival went on to claim the crown with a nine-point advantage.

It was every bit as close and competitive last year with the Czech Republic’s Ervin Krajčovič, who was third in 2022, locking horns with the defending champion over five fiercely-contested rounds before finally emerging on top following a dramatic deciding round at Morizès in France.

Incidentally, the winner on that day just over twelve months ago was series newcomer Sammy Halbert. It was the American’s first FIM Flat Track World Championship victory, but certainly not his last and after adding two further wins this season he will start in Hungary with a seven-point lead over Krajčovič and with the title within his grasp.

The action in the Perényi Pál Salakmotor Stadion for the sixth and final round of the 2024 FIM Flat Track World Championship powered by Anlas, Kineo, Blackburst and HKC Koopmann is scheduled to get under way with the first Heat at 14:00 local time with the action streamed LIVE on FIM-MOTO-TV.