Thursday evening saw the Belle Vue Aces season remaining on the up and up, as they added the Premiership Pairs title to their League championship they won last season, as the duo of Dan Bewley & Brady Kurtz secured glory for the Manchester side with a 7-2 race win over the Peterborough Panthers to be crowned champions at Leicester’s Beaumont Park.
While the field may not have been the strongest it could have been, it was still a competitive one. Belle Vue’s first outing in the meeting came in Heat 3, when they faced fellow Roses’ rivals the Sheffield Tigers. And the Aces took an opening 7-2 race win over Pole Tobiasz Musielak and reserve Dan Gilkes to show that Belle Vue meant business in this pairs competition. Their second heat showed that they wouldn’t have things quite their own way, as they lost out 5-4 to the hosts Leicester Lions, where Drew Kemp and former Aces no 1 in Max Fricke, packed the minor places with Dan Bewley taking victory. Heat 10 saw the Aces taking a 5-4 themselves against the Peterborough Panthers, as while Richie Worrall became the first opposing rider to beat Dan Bewley on the night by taking the race win on his former track, Bewley and Kurtz sat in second and third to take the over all heat win.
It saw Belle Vue Team manager Mark Lemon then opting to insert Jake Mulford into the next race, as Heat 12 saw the mandatory reserve change having captain Brady Kurtz sitting out, while the Ipswich Witches took a 5-4 through Erik Riss and Danny King. Next up was another East Anglian side, as the King’s Lynn Stars were their opposition in Heat 15, with Danish rider Nicolai Klindt recording his fourth straight race win of the night and on route to his personal haul of 22 pts on the night. The race itself though, saw the Aces taking comfortably taking a 5-4 heat win with Thomas Jorgensen of the Stars nowhere near. With two races left in the 21 heat programme, it saw Belle Vue needing a couple of points to be guaranteed of a semi final spot, and got them with a maximum 7-2 victory over Wolverhampton.
With Peterborough qualifying straight through with 33 points, one ahead of Belle Vue on 32 – it saw a re-run of Heat 3, as the Aces and the Sheffield Tigers battled it out for a place in the final. But just like the previous race between the two sides, it saw the Belle Vue boys in Bewley and Brady taking maximum points again over the Sheffield duo to make to the final and facing the Panthers. The grand final itself saw the Aces making the quicker starts away from tapes, with the Panthers Richie Worrall trying his hardest to make a pass, but the Belle Vue pair held out to become 2023 Premiership Pairs champions. Victory for the pair sees them following in the tyre tracks of former club legends in Chris Morton and Peter Collins, who won the pairs event in 1984 at Wolverhampton; while another Aces legend in Jason Crump was part of the last duo to win the Best Pairs back in 2006, when he rode with the now Sheffield Tigers team manager Simon Stead at Swindon.
Belle Vue Aces = 32
Dan Bewley – 3, 4, 3, 4, 2, 4 = 20
Brady Kurtz – 4, 0, 2, JM, 3, 3 = 12
Res. Jake Mulford – 0 = 0
A Track With A VUE 