With the Speedway Grand Prix calender heading for a close we stopped off at Vojens in Denmark for round nine of eleven. Vojens was the host for the Speedway World Cup held last month and yesterday saw the three championship contenders make their ninth missionary statement in their overall bid to became World Champion. At the start of the night Gollob led the way on 117 points with fellow Pole Hampel on 110, defending champion Crump was still in the running on 107 points.
The heats kicked off with Hampel finishing second which was followed by Crump finishing third in the second heat. Gollob looked to take advantage immediately by comfortably winning his heat in the third heat but Lindgren crashed into Pedersen which nearly caused a race restart, however Gollob was already over the finish line before the accident occurred. The drama continued into the fourth heat when wild card entry Niels Kristian Iversen caused Rune Holta to crash and was excluded in the restart. which Rune Holta went onto win.
The first battle between the contenders occurred in the fifth heat when Gollob managed to beat Crump to the chequered flag. That was followed up two heats later when Hampel won his respective heat. Crump grabbed his first heat win in the tenth before the two Poles clashed in the following heat, Gollob again winning with Hampel second. Hampel and Crump met in the 15th heat which was won by Crump with Hamepl dropping to third. This was immediately followed up by Gollob winning his third heat out of three.
Gollob made it a clean sweep in the 18th heat with yet another impressive display. Hampel won the 19th heat after Woffinden and Watt were both excluded for a mechanical failure and crashing out. That left the restart between Hampel and Lindgren which the Pole won comfortably. The final heat was down to Crump but he could only finish second, which was still enough to grab a place into the semi-finals.
The first semi-final saw Gollob (who scored the maximum 15 points) win again with Dane Pedersen (who scored 10) follow Gollob into the final. Aussie Chris Holder (who scored 9) finished third with Magnus 'Zorro' Zetterstrom (who scored 8) finishing last. The second semi-final saw Crump and Hampel go head to head but it was another Dane, Kenneth Bjerre (who scored 10), who won the semi-final. Crump (who scored 11) just made the final with last season's Nordic Grand Prix winner Andreas Jonsson (who scored 8) finishing third. This meant Hampel finished last and couldn't add to his eleven points scored in the meeting.
Gollob rounded off a perfect night with the win in Denmark to give him the maximum 24 points on offer. Kenneth Bjerre finished second with Crump not being able to fully maximise his advantage over Hampel finishing in third, leaving Nicky Pedersen fourth. The Championship standings after nine rounds looks like this: Gollob 141 points, Crump 122 points, Hampel 121 points. Surely the 19 point gap will be enough for Gollob with just two meetings left but anything could happen.
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