With just a week to regroup after the opening round, the steel-shoed superstars of the 2024 FIM Flat Track World Championship powered by Anlas, Kineo, HKC Koopmann and Blackburst fire straight back into action this coming Saturday (27 July) with round two at the Speedwaystadion Meissen in Germany.
- 2024 FIM Flat Track World Championship heads to Germany for round two
- World-class field converges on Speedwaystadion Meissen
- Two-time champion Lasse Kurvinen aims to extend his championship lead
Following last weekend’s electrifying opener in Boves-Cuneo in north-west Italy, twenty-three racers will assemble in the east of the country to fight it out and at the front of the pack – for the first time since 2021 – is super-fast Finn Lasse Kurvinen (KTM).
The forty-five-year-old, who won back-to-back titles in 2020 and 2021 before focussing his racing efforts on the USA, made a huge impact on his return to the series and following impressive performances in the Heats including two wins he charged to victory in the Grand Final.
Kurvinen was chased across the line in the Grand Final by Britain’s Tim Neave (Yamaha). In just his second season in the series, the twenty-nine-year-old former road racer – who was eleventh in 2023 – found his form in Italy with two Heat wins and two second places before streaking to a career-first podium ahead of experienced American Sammy Halbert.
Halbert, an X-Games gold medallist and former American Motorcyclist Association Grand National Champion, won three of his Heat races and will be aiming to carry this formidable form into Meissen, but behind the top three there is no shortage of talented racers with their own podium ambitions.
A fighting fourth at the opening round, reigning champion Ervin Krajčovič (KTM) from the Czech Republic knows he cannot afford to let the leading trio gain too much early ground on him if he is to successfully defend his crown. However, while he has his sights set on the riders ahead of him he cannot afford to discount the threat posed by the world-class field behind him – especially when the chasing pack is led by the rider who he deposed last year.
Champion in 2022, Spain’s Gerard Bailo (Zaeta) took last season’s title fight all the way to the concluding round and in Italy he looked impressive following his change of team over the off-season, never finishing outside of the top three in his Heat races before opening his 2024 account with fifth in the Grand Final ahead of Germany’s Markus Jell (KTM), another man who demonstrated that he has podium pace.
After showing nerves of steel to qualify for the Grand Final via the Last Chance Heat, Dutchman Menno Van Meer (Honda) will be aiming to pile on more points on Saturday and it would be foolish to discount the challenges of, among other racers, Czech rider Ondřej Svědík (Yamaha) and Japan’s Masatoshi Ohmori (Zaeta).
Svědík led last year’s championship following the opening round in Great Britain while Ohmori, Japan’s leading rider in this highly-specialised discipline, last contested the series in 2022 when he finished fifth in the final championship standings.
The first Heat in the Speedwaystadion Meissen is scheduled to get under way at 17:00 local time. For more information click here.
Starting List
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Words by FIM Flat Track – Images by Jesper Veldhuizen
