Speedway Grand Prix

FIM Speedway Grand Prix

Sport	motorcycle speedway
Founded	1995
Motto	No brakes, no gear, no fear
No. of teams	15 riders + 1 wild card
Country	Worldwide
Most recent champion(s)	Jason Crump
Official website	website

Speedway Grand Prix are a series of stand-alone speedway events over the course of a season used to determine the Speedway World Champion. As of 2007, all of the events take place in Europe.

Event format

The format for a Speedway Grand Prix has changed for the 2007 season. Sixteen riders take part in each Grand Prix and over the course of twenty heats each rider will race against every other rider once. The top eight scorers advance to a semi-final and from each semi-final the 1st and 2nd placed riders will advance to the GP final.

All rides now count towards Grand Prix points totals, including the semi-final and final, which counts double (6-4-2-0) and therefore the maximum points for a single GP is 24 (5x heat wins, semi final win and final win). This scoring revision was introduced as a result of comments made during 2006 that the 4 finalists received too many points compared to the losing semi-finalists who in turn received little benefit compared to, say, the 9th placed non-qualifier [1]. Also, this format means that the winner of each Grand Prix may not be the rider who scores most GP points from each race.

Qualification for Grand Prix

The same 15 riders form the basis of the Grand Prix line up throughout the course of the season, barring injuries. The 16th rider, known as the "wild card", will normally be a leading rider from the country in which the Grand Prix is being held. The Wild Card can win the Grand Prix like any other rider, and their World Championship points count the same as the 15 permanent riders, although this has only happened on three occasions by Mark Loram, Martin Dugard and most recently Hans Andersen at the 2006 Danish Grand Prix.

The 15 permanent Grand Prix riders have been decided by various methods over the history of the series. For the 2007 season, 3 riders qualified via the Grand Prix qualifying system of regional qualifiers and international finals. They were joined by the top 8 riders in the 2006 World Championship who had not already qualified and 4 riders who were nominated by series promoters, Benfield Sports International.

Event promotion

The Speedway Grand Prix series and the Speedway World Cup were originally promoted by Benfield Sports International, which later was re-named to BSI Speedway. On 11 April 2007, it was announced that BSI Speedway had been acquired by IMG and the existing team shall take up roles within IMG.[2]

See also

• List of world cups and world championships

External links

• Official Speedway GP site