Tai on top after Finnish SGP Podium

British charger Tai Woffinden is leading the Speedway Grand Prix series after a typically gritty display in Tampere, Finland.

Tai finished second on the same circuit last year and he did the exact same this time round, but he hauled in 17 points and soared straight to the top of the overall standings to make the early running.

He did all that despite dislocating his shoulder in his semi-final, and then it did the very same in the last race of the night. For Tai? No biggie.

He said: “In my last heat race, I went under Greg and was hanging on around the inside. The bike bucked. The shoulder just popped out a little bit. It did the exact same in the next race.

“I have a bit of a shoulder problem. I have had it for a few years. It hurt a little bit, but no excuses. I felt good for my last race. Nicki (Pedersen) just made a great start from gate two. If you make starts, you win races.”

It was a difficult track for the riders to race on - the shale cut up and created a bunch of holes that kept them on their toes and made racing full throttle pretty damn tough.

World Champ Greg Hancock told us: “It was really difficult, in one of my races I was chasing Tai and I hit a hole coming in to the corner and the bike just shot me straight to the fence.

“It was so hard to race properly on it because you didn't want to get one of those holes and end up on your head. It was tough but now we move on.”

For the first time in SGP history we have back-to-back rounds, with the tour heading to Prague, Czech Republic for Round Three next weekend.

That’s a track that Tai knows pretty well, having taken two wins there in the last two years - “It’s a track I enjoy. I’ll see if I can do the hat-trick, but I’ll take it one race at a time – that’s how I have always raced in my career. I’m really looking forward to it.”

Finnish Speedway Grand Prix Result

1 -  Nicki Pedersen (16 points)2 -  Tai Woffinden (17 points)3 -  Andreas Jonsson (12 points) 4 -  Jaroslaw Hampel (11 points)

Series Top Eight

1 -  Tai Woffinden (22 points)2 -  Nicki Pedersen (19 points)3 -  Jaroslaw Hampel (18 points)4 - Andreas Jonsson (16 points)5 - Matej Zagar  (15 points)6 -  Jason Doyle (15 points)7 -  Michael Jepsen Jensen (15 points) 8 -  Greg Hancock (14 points)


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