Wiktor Lampart will only be turning 19-years-old this May as the speedway season gets under way across Europe.
He’s not such a well-known name outside his native Poland, but that maybe about to change after a great 2019 which saw him race his first full season as a junior in the PGE Ekstraliga, the world’s top speedway league as well as competing in the U21 World and European Championships.
In Poland he raced for SPEEDCAR MOTOR Lublin with Grigorij Laguta, Mikkel Michelson, Robert Lambert, Andreas Jonsson and older brother Dawid Lampart for teammates. Not only that, but he came away with an average of 1.544 – which was better than both Antonio Lindbäck and teammate Lambert, who both raced in the SGP series in 2019.
“It is difficult in the Ekstraliga,” he says, “I spent a lot of my money preparing the bikes and engines, on workouts and psychology training,” revealing how much it takes to compete at the top level. “But racing against the best is amazing and a lot of fun for me,” he says, content with his day job.
At the moment his plans for 2020 are to continue at Lublin and take every opportunity he gets at national and international level to better himself, “I want to increase my Ekstraliga average per heat and get on the podium at the Junior World Championship,” as well as the Polish championships, he said, “and I hope come to Sweden.”
Lampart finished 9th in the U21 World Championship and was the fourth best Pole in the competition behind the medal winning trio of Maksym Drabik, Bartosz Smektala and Dominic Kubera (in yellow helmet, above). Together with these three riders he also won the U21 World Championship team competition in Manchester.
Back to the individual U21 World Championship, in 2020 five of the riders above him will not be eligible, including Drabik and Smektala, so Lampart has a good chance of medalling this year - and in 2021 too.
But there was no doubt about his own personal highlight for 2019, “the U21 European championship in Rivne, because there was the additional heat and there was fight to the last”.
Lampart was crowned European champion in a nail-biting finale in Ukraine in August. The 18-year-old needed two points in his last heat, number 19, to win, but came in third, whilst Russian rival, Roman Lachbaum came in first. With both riders’ level on 12 points, that forced a head-to-head final extra race, which the Polish rider won.
With age on his side, watch out for Lampart - a name which you be certainly hearing a lot more of in the years to come.
