Young Lions Speedway

The British Youth Championship at Scunthorpe took place for the 125s on the 30th April and the 250cc and 500cc on the 2nd July after originally getting rained off on the 29th May.

The 125s consisted of a large class of 20 riders, and as always with such a good race track and a competitive class the four finalist were not decided right up until the very last race.

Archie Freeman who made his first appearance in 2017, looked real quality and proven that all his hard work racing at Newcastle on a regular basis and all the Northern Junior League action proved that he has made some great progress over the last few months.

Local boy Luke Harrison was also on good form along with a number of the other racers.

For all the good performances there was no better performance than 12 year old Sam McGurk who has stated the season in great form, and again this performance was  polished, with a clean sweep of 4 wins out of 4 in his qualifying heats to get first pick of gates in the final.

Also making the final along with Sam, Harrison and Freeman was Corban Pavitt who gets better and better every time he goes out on track.

The final was a close race, and at one point got a bit too close between Pavitt and Freeman, as they clashed coming out of bend 2, Freeman came down, the race was stopped and the unlucky Pavitt got excluded.

In the re-run Sam made no mistake had a perfect start, and led for the 4 laps with Freeman keeping him honest and Harrison not find behind.

Moving on 2 months it was the turn of the 250cc and 500cc to compete at the Lincolnshire venue, and again they did not disappoint.

8 riders competed in the 250cc, and unfortunately there was only 3 riders available in the 500cc.

Even though some small numbers, the racing was really exciting, and although the Young Lions are biased, the racing is as good at this level as your see anywhere.

Some of the race times in the 500cc were quicker than the times in Scunthorpe Championship match, so it goes to prove what talent there is.

The 250cc was nip and tuck for the final and the impressive Jordan Palin top scored with 10, to have first pick then the remaining 3 places was between 4 riders who all scored 8 points.

The unlucky rider who missed out on countback was Nathan Ablitt, but for sure his time will come.

So along with Palin, Jason Edwards, Dan Thompson and Leon Flint made the final.

What a race this final was to be, as all 4 riders were all over each other for all 4 laps.

Edwards was delighted to win his first round of 2017  to put some pressure on Flint who leads the series, Flint got 2nd, Palin 3rd and Thompson brought up the rear.

Drew Kemp was bang on form in the 500s winning 3 out of the 4 qualifying heats and the Final, Gilkes ended up with a 2nd place and Liam Little made his first final and he will learn from this experience.