Maksym Drabik, Bartosz Smektała and Max Fricke stood on the U-21 World Championship podium. We would like to remind you that Australian started in cycle as a wild card.
Fricke fought for promotion to finals in Terenzano, Italy, where he scored 11 points. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to promote to EKO-DIR FIM Speedway U-21 World Championship cycle. Organizers decided to give him a wild card and it gave him a chance to defend the title.
Finally Fricke finished tournament on 3rd postition, but his statistics – 2,16 points per heat and 10 victories were better than Bartosz Smektała's. Silver medalist made a 2 points average and won 2 races less.
Despite good stats, Australian was a little bit worse in direct duels. He lost with Maksym Drabik (1:3) and also with Smektała (2:4).
This year wild card, as well as to Fricke, belonged to Patrick Hansen and Alexander Woentin. That trio scored together 68 points by 11 victories, 11 second places and 13 third places. All of them finished race on 4th position 14 times.
A lot worse were riders who had one-time wild card. Rafał Karczmarz (Poznań) and Michael Haertel (Germany) tried to be in a contact with the best juniors in the world. However, Patrik Mikel (Pardubice) didn’t score a single point. Finally that trio won 1 race, finished second only one time, made three points by finishing third and 10 times didn’t score anything.
