The other day, 26-year-old Mikkel Michelsen received a birthday present from Martin Smolinski. The German announced for this year's WC Grand Prix series, and thus first reserve Michelsen took over the place. On Saturday night, Michelsen can equalize by qualifying for the WC 2021.
By Ib Søby
As you know, Smolinski crashed earlier this year, during training in Leipzig, and the sympathetic German must now admit that the fight against the clock was lost. He must leave the place for the corona-amputated WC 2020 to Mikkel Michelsen.
On Saturday night, it applies to three Grand Prix places for next year, and for this, Denmark - NERI - has been awarded a single place.
The same goes for the fifteen other countries.
One man from each country, twenty heats, three tickets to the 2021 World Cup Grand Prix.
The scene on Saturday is otherwise the same as last year. Originally, this year's Grand Prix Challenge was to be run in Slovak Zarnovica - but nothing is normal in 2020 - and when the Slovaks announced, the Croatian Gorican, located in the city of Donji Kralevec, was ready to take over.
The Croatian great contractor and course owner Zvonko Pavlic has thus once again given his son, Jurica, the best conditions to crown his career with a trip to the promised land that the Grand Prix series is.
Last year in the Gorican, Matej Zagar, Niels Kr. Iversen and Max Fricke the three World Cup places.
Matej Zagar is back on Saturday, and so is Fricke, but Michelsen will also face tough sneezers such as Grigori Laguta, Timo Lahti and Krzysztof Kasprzak.
It is an unpredictable race, but if Michelsen finishes in the top three, it has been a really good week around his birthday - also for Danish speedway, of course.
Grand Prix Challenge 2020
1 Grigori Laguta, RUS
2 Krzysztof Kasprzak, POL
3 Matej Zagar, SLO
4 Mikkel Michelsen, DEN
5 Jurica Pavlic, KRO
6 Nicolas Covatti, ITA
7 Oliver Berntzon, SVE
8 Broc Nicol, USA
9 Adam Ellis, GB
10 Kevin Woelbert, TYS
11 Timo Lahti, FIN
12 Vaclav Milik, TJK
13 Max Fricke, AUS
14 Yevgeny Kostigovs, LET
15 Dimitri Bergé, FRA
16 Aleksandr Loktaev, UKR
..
17 Nick Skorja, SLO
18 Norbert Magosi, UNG