Still All to Ride Fo(u)r
(Posted 04/10/07)

The battle for the semi-final place in the Young Shield is still very open after Tigers went down by only 8 points in the opening leg at Redcar last night.

On a rather slick track, the meeting did not really live up to the recent clashes between the two sides and heat results were very much affected by an overwhelming advantage for the rider coming out of gate four in every heat.

The opening two heats were shared from the gate, Havelock winning comfortably in heat 1 with Lee Dicken untroubled in heat 2, both riders off gate 4.

There was a little bit of controversy in heat 3 when Auty went hard under Ksiezak on the third bend and appeared to make contact. Ksiezak came off but remounted although he was unable to get back into the race and the home side got the first heat advantage of the meeting.

Chris Kerr made it 4 winners from gate 4 from the tapes winning a shared heat with Redcar reserve Jack Hargreaves suffering engine failure before the opening bend.

Once again gate 4 provided the winner in heat 5 although this heat did produce some racing. Watson was the lucky rider who was off gate four and he hit the front. Grieves however challenged him for most of the race but was unable to find a way through. At the same time, there was a battle going on for the minor placing's between McAllan and Auty but on a track which did not look as if it would provide any alternative to the one racing line, McAllan held off Redcar's youngster with relative ease.

Tigers were hit a hefty blow in heat 6 when Auty gated off gate 4 and Havelock settled in behind him to team ride and protect the youngster although in reality they were never at any risk and recorded a comfortable 5-1.

Kerr was rightly excluded in the initial running of heat 7 after knocking Robert Ksiezak off and the re-run saw the first win of the night not from gate .It came for Glasgow guest Jason Lyons out of gate two who won from the gate and with the dusted down Robert Ksiezak off the favoured gate 4 slotting in behind him it, Tigers were able to claim their only 5-1 of the meeting with relative ease. It did look for a while as if Tigers would claim a second 5-1 in a row when McAllan and Dicken led Kerr and Hargreaves in heat 8 but the young American executed an excellent pass on Lee Dicken to claim second spot.

Redcar hit back with a 5-1 of their own in heat 9 courtesy of a heat win by James Grieves. There was an excellent battle behind him between Leverington, who held second most of the race, and Auty wish saw a very hard but fair inside pass by Auty off the final bend beat the new Tigers captain.

Lyons won the shared heat 10 comfortably from a strong Bears pairing of Havelock and Grieves before the gate 4 advantage was grasped again by Redcar in heat 11 with Kerr slotting in behind Giffard to team ride round for a surprise 5-1 over Watson and McAllan.

James Grieves gated in heat 12 but Tigers guest Jason Lyons executed one of the meetings rare overtakes squeezing past on the second lap. Grieves tried everything to regain the lead but Lyons held him off for the win. Craig Watson then won a shared heat 13 from the tapes.

Heat 14 saw some good competitive speedway between Josh Auty and Robert Ksiezak. Robert had gated but Auty got the better of him courtesy of an outside pass and held on for the win to ensure a bears win on the night.

With the points margin for the second leg now important, Glasgow would have been happy to win the toss for heat 15 allowing them to chose the far superior gate 4. however it was Redcar's James grieves who was to pop out of the inside gate to go on and win the shared heat.

Overall Tigers were probably happy to come away with only an 8 point deficit although they relied fairly heavily on their top two. the track certainly did not help speedway on the night however, its inconsistency being highlighted by 10 of the 15 heats being won from gate 4 with only Lyons (twice), Grieves (twice) and Watson being able to buck the trend.

With Tigers only beating Redcar by one point at Ashfield in the league two weeks ago Tigers still have a lot of work to do but the tie is very much still in the balance