At Brandon tonight the Coventry Bees played host to the Kings Lynn Stars in a meeting that saw riders missing from both sides due to international commitments.
However the evening was notable for the home debut for the Russian rider Emil Sayfutdinov who has taken the speedway world by storm in the grand prix series over the past couple of years.
Tracking a notable guest in Tai Woffenden, who received a very noisy reception at Cardiff last week when he took a super heat placing in his one ride as grand prix reserve, in the Bees side for the absent Edward Kennett, the action commenced with early heats being shared.
The Bees managed to steadily open up a gap of 10 points by the end of Heat 10, at which point the tactical ride option opened up for the Stars which they duly took advantage of in heat 11, as Kenneth Bjarre took a double points scoring heat victory and with his team mate in 3rd place the gap was now back to 5 points.
Heat advantages were traded and heat 14 providing some luck for the Bees as trailing to a Stars 5-1 former Bee Sitera suffered an engine problem on the last lap that let both the Bees riders through to share the spoils.
The final heat had some controversy as Kings Lynn rider Korneliussen hit the shale twice on the 2 aborted starts, the first resulted in the exclusion of Sayfutdinov even though there didn't appear to be any contact, the second under pressure from Woffenden resulted in no exclusions and another re-start. Woffenden led the way to give the Bees a victory by 49 points to 44.
Tonights Bees scorers were: