The last time I saw a speedway race must have been around 30 years ago and it was ice speedway. I had no contact with this sport for a long time, until my friend Bjørn recently great pictures brought out of the mud. I really have no idea about the sport, but I smelled good pictures and asked Bjørn to take me along. And because he's one of the good guys, he did that on Saturday.
It was Brokstedt in the Holsteinring and it was about the first final for the German championship title in 2017. The pairing was Brokstedt against Landshut and has actually been the best that German speedway racing has to offer for many years. It is a repeat of the finals in 2016 and 2014 - last year the record champions from Landshut won, two years before that MSC Brokstedt won.
Speedway is a nice combination of team and individual sport. Two drivers from each team compete against each other in a run. After four laps around the flat, oval track, the first place player gets 2 points, the second place gets 3 points, the 2rd place gets one point and the last place gets no point. 3 drivers make up a team and 6 runs make up a race day. According to Adam Riese, you notice that every driver gets multiple turns. Each race lasts roughly 14 seconds. So much for the technical stuff. The admirable thing about the riders' skills is that the motorcycles only have one gear and no brakes. Nevertheless, the machines reach top speeds of around 70kmh.
Brokstedt narrowly won the first final on Saturday with 45:39 points. On Tuesday there will be the second leg of the second final in Landshut. The 2017 German champions will finally be celebrated there.
This time Tobias Kroner was celebrated at his last home game. The captain of MSC Brokstedt will stop racing speedway sports at the end of the year and of course I wish the likeable driver the team championship title at the end of his career.
So and how do I capture all of this in pictures? I had my Leica M10 with 28mm, 50 mm and 90mm included. Since I didn't know how close I would get to the track, I had the Nikon D500 with it just to be on the safe side 105* included. One of the few lenses that can compete with the Leica lenses in terms of drawing. And – as I realized afterwards – a good decision. Have fun looking at my impressions - click on pictures to enlarge :)
Conclusion: a racing afternoon that was very entertaining. I also met a lot of very nice people. Which top athletes can be photographed so closely? I hope there will be another chance to discover the speedway virus on the track with my camera. Many thanks to Bjørn for the opportunity. By the way, you can find his interesting pictures from race day on Google or Facebook.
If you would like to experience a speedway race at MSC Brokstedt: it's that time again on May 1.5.2018st, XNUMX.
Great pictures of a fascinating sport!
oh cool!
Absolutely worth seeing series of pictures, it brings back old memories of the sand track races in Scheeßel.
Wherever you are, always respect