Gustafsson, Christiansen, Mechaell, Lymant and Morrison take top spots heading into Euro Finals eliminations
The final two qualifying sessions on the 2024 FIM-E season at the Euro Finals at Santa Pod Raceway shuffled some of the pack, but largely remained as was yesterday (Friday) with one notable exception.
Rikard Gustafsson tuned things up a little in the final session of FIM-E Top Fuel Bike to underline his performance advantage with a 5.8636/247.86 to head into eliminations tomorrow with almost half a second advantage of the rest of the field. Stuart Crane (2nd from yesterday) was joined by his Warpspeed funny bike team-mate Mark Smith who produced a new PB with a 6.4674/212.83 from the Drapers Tool ride. Mike Olie also stepped up with 6.4810/207.07 best from his Kawasaki funny. The eight bike field had a returning Neil Midgley ending up as first alternate feeling his way back into fuel bike action after his accident in Sweden just over a year ago.
FIM-E Super Twin saw Marcus Christiansen get past Per Bengtsson’s consistent 6.2s in the last pairing of the two when the Dane lifted the front wheel and hauled to a 6.2143/213.95. The finish line numbers only telling part of the story as the eighth mile beams were tripped at 3.96 seconds and Christiansen had to roll off the throttle for just over half a second to regain some directional stability on what otherwise could have been a barrier busting pass.
Like Gustafsson, Jake Mechaell finished qualifying as he did yesterday on top of the FIM-E Super Street Bike heap with a 6.7378/217.95 best, with Daniel Donat Lencses (6.7405), Alan Morrison Jnr (6.8065), Mogens Lund (6.8276), Ross Morrison (6.9305) and Margot Schmidt (6.9550) completing the top six in the sixes. It was almost seven as Kostas Giannopoulos almost joined them with a 7 flat personal best. Tomorrow will see an all run thirteen bike ladder which will decide the Euro Finals event title and the 2024 FIM-E championship.
Jorg Lymant has picked up a number of low qualifying bonus points (including a pole sitting best of 7.1897 from the Buell) in FIM-E Pro Stock Bike preliminaries that has almost confirmed a title, although a worrying electrical issue caused an abrupt cut out on the fourth session that the German team were chasing during the evening.
In the FIM-E Juniors Leah Morrison stays on top of the six bike field improving to an almost dead-on 11.1081 on an 11.10 dial-in in the final session with Anouk Burgering moving into second spot with a +0.0416 on a 12.32.
Words and photos Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes
