Jason Doyle and Jack Holder joint leaders in Australian Championship
Gillman Media, 5 January 2023
Jason Doyle and Jack Holder are joint leaders of the Australian 500cc Solo Speedway Championship after a fast and furious first round at Gillman Speedway in Adelaide on Tuesday night (3 January).
The meeting boasted the last six Australian Champions, Chris Holder (2014), Jason Doyle (2015), Brady Kurtz (2016), Sam Masters (2017), Rohan Tungate (2018), and Max Fricke (2019, 20, 22), but such was the strength, and the evenness of the competition that the first two heats were won by riders who have never won the championship, Justin Sedgmen and Jack Holder.
The opening heat set the tone when Sedgmen sprung a surprise by leading home three former winners, Chris Holder, Kurtz and the defending champion Fricke. Sedgmen was a contender for several years before a shoulder injury slowed him down for a couple of seasons but this season he is riding as good as ever and virtually had a semi-final berth sealed after only three rides, with another win and a second to Doyle.
While Sedgmen was shining, at the opposite end of the scorecard, Max Fricke was pointless, and looking at a possible early exit, after two rides. After his first heat last, which in part could be put down to a first turn contact with Kurtz which made him lose his line and drop to last, he came up against three first round winners, Jack Holder, Tungate and Masters, in his next ride and they finished in that order with Fricke fourth again. He recovered, however, to win his last three rides and qualify for the semi-finals in sixth place.
The highest scorers from the 20 qualifying heats were Jack Holder and Tungate, who always ride well at Gillman, on 14 points. Holder won his first three rides and looked like going through the card unbeaten but dropped a point to Doyle in heat 14, which to that point was the best race of the night as Holder, Doyle and Chris Holder were three wide, shoulder-to-shoulder, at times, with Ben Cook just behind them and trying to sneak through on the inside while they were battling on the high line.
Tungate dropped his only point in the previously mentioned race with Jack Holder, Masters and Fricke.
Doyle was the third highest scorer on 13 points, with points dropped to Tungate and Fricke, with Sedgmen next on 12, Chris Holder on 11, Fricke on 9 and Brady Kurtz, Sam Masters and Ben Cook on 8, with Cook the unlucky one to miss out on a semi-final berth on the countback of heat wins.
As it turned out, Kurtz also missed out after he was injured in a shocking looking crash with Ben Cook in their last heat ride (heat 19). Kurtz outgunned Tungate with a ruthless first half-a-lap to take the lead and was looking very good as he led for three laps, but he got a little sideways, and then lifted slightly, though turn four and onto the main straight at the end of lap three which gave Tungate an opening. They were level across the line, and when Tungate got ahead into turn one, Kurtz turned too tightly to try for an inside pass, lost some traction and spun around, and fell right in the path of Cook. Cook crashed into Kurtz’s shoulders/head area and was thrown through the air, landing on his back. Both were very lucky not to suffer serious head/neck injuries, and thankfully after a lengthy delay both were able to be assisted up, but, as mentioned, Kurtz was unable to take his place in the semi-finals.
The first Semi-Final, without Kurtz, was between the Holder brothers and Doyle – two World individual champions and a current GP rider (and World Pairs Champion [Speedway of Nations]) – so quite a line-up and they produced a fitting race as they exchanged places multiple times before Jack regained the lead on the last lap to take a narrow win ahead of Doyle, with Chris third, and therefore eliminated from the final.
The second Semi-Final brought together Tungate, Sedgmen, Fricke and Masters and they were in that order out of turn two when Masters lifted, went wide and hit the fence on the back straight. He was pitched forward off the bike and landed heavily on his left shoulder, suffering muscle damage which looks like forcing him to withdraw from the other rounds of the championship. In the rerun without Masters, Tungate lifted slightly going into turn two and when he came down he cannoned into the side of Sedgmen and knocked him off. Sedgmen slid along the track and hit the fence back first near the pit gate. Tungate was excluded, and Fricke and Sedgmen went through the motions to earn their places in the final. It was a disappointing end for Tungate, who, of course, would have been straight into the final under the usual Gillman format of highest three scorers going direct to the final.
In the final, Holder chose red, Fricke blue, Doyle yellow, leaving Sedgmen in the least favoured white. The inside three all rode a tight line for the first half a lap and it was Holder leading from Fricke and Sedgmen, but Doyle used the knowledge gained from riding here in the Oceania Championship the previous week to get up high near the fence and he was able to blast around the other three to take the lead from Holder on the second lap. From that point it was all Doyle, despite Holder’s efforts to catch him. Holder finished second, Fricke third and Sedgmen fourth.
With 4-3-2-1 points on the final being added to the points scored in the 20 heats, the leaders in the series points going into the second round at Albury-Wodonga on Saturday night are Doyle and Jack Holder 17, Tungate 14, Sedgmen 13 and Chris Holder and Fricke on 11, however Sedgmen has chosen not to do the other rounds so he is out of the running.
The next Gillman meeting is the Bowes Family Sidecar Cup on 14 January, followed by the South Australian Solo Championship on 28 January 28. Sedgmen is the current SA Champion but there is no indication yet whether he’ll defend the title. If he does ride, and wins, he’ll be the first rider to successfully defend the title since Troy Batchelor won four in a row from 2008 to 2011.
