Leicester have an early opportunity to ‘wash away the blues’ following last night’s result in Essex with the return fixture against Lakeside tonight and Team Manager Norrie Allan has made a rallying call to his riders.
In the previous three home fixtures the Paul Chapman and Sons Lions have twice let slip a lead in the final race of the night and were level on points with Wolverhampton last week at Beaumont Park with three races remaining only to lose the Midlands derby.
Norrie Allan said: “We cannot afford to keep throwing points away after working so hard to get ourselves into a good position to win the meeting. It could have been so easily wins against King’s Lynn and Poole who pulled out that little bit extra in Heat 15 of both matches to draw. Last week against Wolverhampton we were level with them right up to the end of the twelfth heat. We had provided nine of the twelve race winners but a failure to gain the important second and third positions was our undoing. We gained one bonus point between seven riders whereas the visitors totalled ten. On those statistics alone of having a large majority of riders crossing the finishing line in front should have meant a clear win for us.”
Andreas Jonsson is the star attraction and captain of the visiting team which consists of six British riders. The multi Swedish Champion and triple World Cup gold medallist was unbeaten by a Leicester rider on his very first visit to Beaumont Park in April and his fellow heat leader Richard Lawson was also in unbeatable form. Tonight the Hammers are missing one of their top points’ scorers, Kim Nilsson, who is competing in a Grand Prix semi-final qualifier in Croatia. Lakeside are bringing in Craig Cook, another Leicester track specialist, as a guest replacement.
Teams
Leicester: 1. Patrick Hougaard, 2. Josh Auty, 3. Aaron Summers, 4. Rider Replacement for Szymon Wozniak, 5. Davey Watt, 6. Nicolai Klindt and 7. Paul Starke
Lakeside: 1. Andreas Jonsson, 2. Edward Kennett, 3. Richard Lawson, 4. Lewis Bridger, 5. Craig Cook, 6. Robert Mear and 7. Lewis Kerr
