Monday May 20, 2019 at 12:11pm
The first round of the European FIM Championships in 2019 takes place at Santa Pod Raceway on the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend on May 24th –27th. Top Fuel Bike. Filippos Papafilippou starts his defence of the title and will have some strong opponents with the returning Rikard Gustafsson, who became the first European rider to run 250mph plus. Steve Woollatt won the Festival of Power event in the ACU Championship and set a new ACU ET record 6.062. Rene Van Den Berg has run 6.09 and is the ACU Speed record holder. If any of the Top Fuel bikes have problems then Funny Bike riders Stuart Crane and EDRS Pro Nordic MC Top Fuel Bike Thomas Pettersson could win the event. SuperTwins. Marcus Christiansen dominated both FIM and EDRS Series last year winning both championships and will be trying to retain the title. Former FIM and Nordic Champion Samu Kemppainen has entered and last years event winner Hans Olav Olstad. Multi-time Champion Martijn De Haas and Springspeed Nationals winner Neil Midgley will be riders to look out for. Allan Davies will be hoping to run his first six-second and 200mph plus at the event. Pro Stock Bike. Bertrand Maurice will have Fredrik Fredlund challenging him for the title and the every improving Martin Newbury who won his first FIM event here at last years European Finals. Martin Bishop and Len Paget have also entered the event. Super Street Bike. This is round two of Super Street Bike Alex Hope won the first round in Hungary a few weeks ago. Steve Venables set a new ACU ET and Speed records last month 6.815-211.92mph and ran a personal best of 218.28mph. Garry Bowe ran a personal best at the same event 6.960. Mogens Lund won the European Finals here last year and was a runner up at this event last year. European FIM Champion Richard Stubbins makes his first appearance of the year. Stephen Mead has had a good start to the season so has Graham Balchin. Twenty-Six bikes have entered, which include ACU Comp Bike Champion Margot Schmidt, Springspeed Nationals runner up Graham Dance. Report by Steven Moxley.