The FIM Flat Track World Championship returns to the track this weekend for the first of three World Finals in three weeks to decide 2022 honours. Competitors will head to the 391 metre Speedway Stadion Svítkov in Pardubice, a regular venue for FIM Flat Track which made its debut on the World Cup calendar in 2013 and returned to host the first event with World Championship status in 2020.
This season, as in 2021, the Czech Round will be the third meeting of the season, following the German Round in mid-July and the French Round three weeks ago. But so far there has been only one winner: 18-year-old Italian Matteo Boncinelli taking both Finals either side of the summer break.
Since the most recent fixture in Morizès, a two-week break has allowed competitors to focus on domestic action in what is a busy late-season spell. With four of the top eight in the World Championship Standings at present representing Italy, their two most recent Rounds a fortnight ago provide a useful barometer of form. Plus, the venue for those two meetings, the Boves TT, will host the 2022 World Championship finale on a newly remodelled circuit, so the additional track time may prove useful for some of the medal contenders. For now at least it would be bold to bet against Boncinelli, who won on both days at the Bisalta Motor Park, although Gianni Borgiotti, still chasing his first top-twelve result of the season in the World Championship, showed some good form. Kevin Corradetti unfortunately missed the trip to the Maritime Alps after his crash at Morizès, but appears in the entry list for Pardubice and hopes to be fit in time. Meanwhile, Jack Bell and Tim Greig both return from duty in the UK Nationals, which celebrated its season finale last weekend.
Just six points separate series leader Matteo Boncinelli from Spain’s Gerard Bailo before the triple header, but the rest of the pack have taken points from one another and will need to string together some strong results to make up for lost time. Francesco Cecchini won the inaugural World Championship event in Pardubice back in 2020, and he will aim to repeat that feat in a bid to make up some of the daunting 29-point margin to his fellow countryman at the front. Six-times World Cup winner Cecchini has continued to feel the effects of his crash in Diedenbergen that left him with a dislocated shoulder and just a single point from the opening Round; he struggled for race fitness in the Final in Morizès but walked away with a first podium and will expect to build from there. Kevin Corradetti was the last winner in Pardubice but is also bouncing back from his crash. And Daniele Moschini is the only rider to have made both podiums at the Czech Round in the last two years with two third places; he will now hope to take a first victory and climb from the same place in the 2022 series Standings.
No less than six home representatives will line up in the Czech Republic. They will be led by Ervin Krajčovič, who is closing in on his first podium: he was fifth in Pardubice last year on his way to tenth in the Championship, then sixth last time out in Morizès to move seventh in the 2022 Standings.
Racing gets underway on Saturday at 13:00 local time as part of the 74th staging of the Czech Golden Helmet Speedway festival and after Friday night’s European Speedway Championship event, guaranteeing a strong attendance for Flat Track’s Czech Round.
FIM/Alex Raby
