The Hammers made amends for their early season defeat at the hands of Wolverhampton by turning the tables on the men from Monmore Green in this clash, shown live on Sky Sports.
The meeting was full of incident as both sides scrapped, particularly in the latter stages as Wolves tried to pull back the deficit. There were a number of spills and plenty of thrills as early as the opening race when Tyron Proctor sent race leader Lee Richardson crashing, earning an exclusion for this efforts.
Stuart Robson’s woes continued when he slowed and lost ground to the Wolves reserves in heat two, costing the Hammers vital points. The run of incidents continued when Joe Screen laid his bike down in the third race when under pressure from Daniel Davidsson, the Englishman earning an exclusion.
The Davidsson brothers were again both in excellent form and Jonas team rode Daniel home in re-run of the third race for a Lakeside 5-1 before Jonas handed what was to prove to be Fredrik Lindgren’s only defeat of the night in heat five.
The Hammers went on a run of 4-2’s and reached heat eight ten points to the good. Another heat advantage came their way when Proctor took another spill to leave Hammers guest Jason Lyons to collect the third place point.
With the Hammers twelve points up at the turn Wolves boss Peter Adams nominated Tai Woffinden for a tactical ride. Lining up against Jonas Davidsson, it was to prove a classic encounter with Woffinden stalked by the Swede for nearly three laps before the Hammers number four slipped inside to a huge cheer from the home faithful.
With Wolves restricted to a 4-4 shared race, Hammers piled further pressure on, Richardson and Nieminen taking a 5-1 over Joe Screen and Nicolai Klindt. The following heat saw a tactically-nominated Lindgren join the points-less Proctor for an 8-1, leaving Adam Shields in their wake.
The next two races were full of controversy and incident, none more so than heat twelve when Stuart Robson was harshly excluded for bringing down Matthew Wethers in a third turn encounter. Perhaps more alarming was an alarming melee on the second turn of heat thirteen in which Adam Shields was judged to be the cause of a crash that saw Lindgren and Woffinden in particular hit the air fence with an alarming thud.
Thankfully, Woffinden returned to the saddle and he teamed up with Lindgren – who passed Richardson in fine style in the re-run of heat twelve – for a 4-2 to keep Wolves in the hunt. With tension mounting, Lyons and Jonas Davidsson flew from the start in the penultimate race to take the 5-1 that sealed the three Elite League points for the Hammers.
