FIM SPEEDWAY: FRICKE’S FIGHT FOR 2026 SPOT

(Story from FIM Speedway GP)

Aussie ace Max Fricke is determined to punch his own ticket for the 2026 FIM Speedway Grand Prix series – despite missing out on this year’s Speedway GP qualifiers.

Fricke upgraded his 2024 first substitute spot to a full place in the series for 2025 by finishing fourth at the FIM SGP Challenge at Czech track Pardubice on October 4.

But he will not have the chance to reach the 2025 FIM SGP Challenge in Holsted, Denmark this August as it stands, having crashed out of the Australian Championship series in January, sustaining muscle damage to his knee.

In his absence, new Aussie champion Brady Kurtz, runner-up Jack Holder and FIM Oceania champion Rohan Tungate won Australia’s spots in the SGP international rounds. But with Fricke back in the Speedway GP line-up, he knows he can still fight his way back for 2026 with a top-six finish in this year’s championship.

He said: “It will be the first year in a long time when I haven’t been part of the qualifiers. But at the same time, I still have another option to qualify via the GPs and that’s what we are there to do. 

“We are there to try and win the championship. The top six is another goal within the many layers of goals we have throughout the year. It’s just business as usual.”

Fricke finished 11th in the 2024 Speedway GP series, missing the opening three rounds, before he was called up to replace the injured Jason Doyle for the remainder of the season.

He reached two finals, taking second spot in Malilla and fourth in Latvia. Fricke is determined to find the consistency needed to push for a place at the business end of the championship.

“I’ve had a good few years in the GPs,” he said. “I have had opportunities to be in there and show there are days when I can put it together. It’s just a case of trying to be up there more consistently.

“Hopefully we can be there week in, week out throughout the Grand Prix series this year and keep it up.”

Fricke is happy with his recovery from his Aussie knee injury, sustained in Mildura on January 5, as the start of the European season nears. “I’m not too bad,” he said. 

“I had a bit of a close call and got a touch off a couple of riders. I hit my knee pretty hard on the handlebars as I fell. Unfortunately, that fall gave my knee a pretty good knock, so I took a little bit of time to recover from that. I am still working with it, but in the next couple of weeks, I will be back to 100 percent hopefully.

“I have done a bit of rehab. It needed a bit of rest for the first few weeks or so, but then we got into the rehab phase. We are kind of getting towards the end of that and now we start strength building again. It’s all a bit of a process – the healing process we all go through as speedway riders. But there is time for it, so there is no big stress. It was good timing – if there ever is a good time to have an injury – with the season still being a few weeks away.”