EMIL SPEARHEADS WITCHES WIN

EMIL Sayfutdinov raced to a brilliant 15-point maximum as Ipswich kept their play-off hopes alive with a 47-43 win at Peterborough.

The Witches had to dig deep as they trailed by six points with five races remaining, but Sayfutdinov was the star of the show as he was involved in crucial 5-1s in Heats 11 and 13, the latter seeing Jason Doyle go from fourth to second.

It was 43-41 to Ipswich with one race remaining but Panthers duo Benjamin Basso and Niels-Kristian Iversen gated on a 5-1 only for Sayfutdinov to superbly pass both, with Doyle coming through for third place.

A bright spot for the Panthers was a fine show from recent signing Patryk Wojdylo who scored 12 at reserve and twice defeated Doyle, whilst Benjamin Basso impressed with 11+1.

Witches boss Ritchie Hawkins said: “It is another victory and that is what we needed, and it was a really close meeting. Emil was exceptionally fast and was a joy to watch again.

“It was brilliant to see Erik back, from that first heat you could see him grow into the meeting and I also thought our reserves did brilliantly as well.

“All we can do is keep winning and getting as many points as we can on the board and hope someone else slips up. That hasn’t happened yet, but we just need to keep winning.”

Panthers manager Rob Lyon said: “It was a much better performance than last week against Wolves, but we missed Vadim Tarasenko tonight.

“We scored seven for him, but with Patryk going the way he was, it limited us to where we could put those rides.

“But fair play to Ipswich, it was a good performance by them. They hung in there because we had it pretty much won up to about two-thirds of the way through the meeting.”

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Photo credit: JEFF DAVIES