AUSSIE ACE DOYLE: SPEEDWAY GP DOOR STILL OPEN
Aussie icon Jason Doyle insists he isn’t closing the door on the Speedway GP after stepping down from the World Championship for 2027.
Speculation has been rife over his plans since the Belle Vue star admitted he would not be competing in next season’s series during interviews at Manchester’s National Speedway Stadium on Monday, September 14.
Speaking to FIMSpeedway.com following the Aces’ trip to Ipswich on Monday night, September 21, Doyle insists that he isn’t retiring, and he would still be open to a return in the future or to lining up as a wild card.
The 40-year-old is ninth in the Speedway GP standings on 66 points ahead of Saturday’s (September 26) DEWALT FIM Speedway GP of Poland – Torun.
He still believes he can beat the best riders in the world, but he believes now is the time to step away from the competition.
He said: “You have Brady (Kurtz) and the other young boys who are flying at the moment, and if I can bring myself back to making finals, then I will want to be back in the GP. But when I am battling for the LCQs in every GP, it’s not really enjoyable for me, so I need to take a step back.
“If I had the opportunity to have any wild cards, I would take them with both hands. I am not retiring, and I just want people to be aware that I have had a really great time in the GPs. I have given it 100 percent.”
Doyle scored 10 points at his former Ipswich club venue as table-topping Belle Vue stormed to a 52-38 victory in the Rowe Motor Oil Premiership play-off semi-final, first leg on Monday night.
And he insisted: “There is still a lot left in me, as you saw at Ipswich. I’m racing hard and still feeling good on a bike. It’s not that I am retiring at all. I still have plenty of years left in me.
“I just need to be happy again, and that comes from winning races. As my closest people know, my mechanics and my family, when you are not winning, it’s not enjoyable.
“I want to be riding as much as I can in Britain, Sweden, Poland and Denmark when I can. I’ll still be racing the top boys. I can still beat them, so it’s not like I am getting smoked all the time.
“I just haven’t had the right equipment under me. I really feel it has come good in the last couple of months when I had a couple of good mechanics in Poland. My British mechanic, Mark Seabright, has been with me for 11 years and it has always been great in Britain. But when the GPs came with my previous couple of mechanics, we had some dramas.”
The Newcastle-born racer has enjoyed a phenomenal career despite making his Speedway GP debut relatively late in life at the age of 29 in 2015.
Since then, he has won seven SGP rounds, and his 2017 season will live in racing folklore after the sport’s man of steel defied a broken foot to win the Speedway GP World Championship – sealing it with an unforgettable victory at the FIM Speedway GP of Australia – Melbourne.
Having also won the 2022 and 2025 FIM Speedway of Nations world titles with Australia, Doyle became the sport’s first and only modern-day grand slam world champion when he won the 2026 FIM Speedway World Cup in Warsaw on August 29.
Injuries have been cruel to Doyle at times. Despite winning four SGP rounds in 2016, he crashed out of the penultimate round of the season in Torun at a time when he looked on course for gold.
But his DEWALT FIM Speedway GP of Poland – Torun appearance this Saturday sees him match another Aussie legend Leigh Adams on 115 SGP appearances, putting them joint 10th in the series’ all-time appearance charts.
“I didn’t know that,” he admitted. “That’s a great honour. I have been very fortunate to be a late bloomer, and I worked very hard to be in the GPs. I have had 12 seasons of GPs. There have been a lot of injuries involved, but I feel very proud of what I have done.”
As well as planning another busy league season in 2027, Doyle hinted that he may still be open to some international action in the Speedway European Championship.
He said: “I think I might try the SEC next year. I have a British passport, so I might do the British Final and see how we go. It’s possible – I can still do that. But I don’t know what Lemo (Aussie team manager Mark Lemon) will think about it. I would love to ride the SEC and give that a go.”
With his dry sense of humour and knack for dropping the occasional bombshell – a knack that led to inaccurate rumours of his retirement over the last week – it would be interesting to see if Doyle does swap SGP life for a shot at SEC gold.
With the European champion guaranteed a spot in Speedway GP for the following season, he may be back on the sport’s biggest stage sooner than expected if he was handed a SEC place. He also wouldn’t need to give up racing for Australia as a rider can represent one country in international competition and hold the licence of another.
But for now, his focus is on signing off 12 straight seasons in Speedway GP in style this Saturday. He said: “I want to go out with a bang in Torun, make the final, get on to the rostrum and show that I am still capable of winning GPs.”
