Speedway’s highest profile individual meeting of the domestic fixture calendar takes place tonight with the staging of the British Final in Manchester at the new National Speedway Stadium.
Starring 16 of the biggest home grown talent a large attendance is guaranteed for this first staging on the new Belle Vue track. For the past six years the competition has been staged at Wolverhampton but now has a new venue which is the home of Scott Nicholls, a seven-time British Champion.
The line-up includes the Lions two high scoring riders, Josh Auty and Paul Starke who qualified from their respective semi-finals with ease last month. Auty coasted through his five heats at Scunthorpe to finish with twelve points which earned him second place on the rostrum behind Simon Stead. The event will be Auty’s third appearance in the meeting having ridden in the 2012 and 2013 finals and only missed out on the big night again last season through injury.
For Auty’s team partner Paul Starke it will be his first appearance in the showcase event. Starke has been one of the bright lights for Leicester since joining the club at the beginning of the year and his dozen points at Glasgow’s Ashfield Stadium in the second semi-final ensured that he too qualified for the British Final.
Previous Leicester finalists have been Richard Hall in 2011 and Simon Stead three years later. In the first era of the Lions the club were regularly represented in the British Finals by Ray Wilson, John Boulger, Dave Jessup and Les Collins with Wilson the most successful having won the title in 1973.
BRITISH FINAL DRAW: 1. Josh Bates (Coventry/Sheffield), 2. Steve Worrall (Belle Vue/Newcastle), 3. Craig Cook (Belle Vue/Peterborough), 4. Danny King (Coventry/Ipswich), 5. Josh Auty (Leicester/Scunthorpe), 6. Simon Stead (Sheffield), 7. Ben Barker (Coventry/Ipswich), 8. Richard Lawson (Lakeside/Glasgow), 9. Scott Nicholls (Belle Vue), 10. Paul Starke (Leicester/Somerset), 11. Richard Hall (Unattached), 12. Robert Lambert (King’s Lynn/Newcastle), 13. Chris Harris (Coventry), 14. Richie Worrall (Belle Vue/Glasgow), 15. Jason Garrity (Coventry/Sheffield), 16. Kyle Howarth (Wolverhampton/Sheffield). Reserves: Charles Wright (Swindon/Somerset), Lewis Kerr (Lakeside).
