Bears' Ty and Gary miss out on semis; REDCAR BEARS.

Byline: MARTIN NEAL 

THE Redcar Bears duo of Gary Havelock and Ty Proctor failed to progress into the knockout stages of last night's Premier League Pairs meeting at the Oak Tree Arena.

Havelock and Proctor made a bright start but were pipped to a place in the final by eventual winners Birmingham while Edinburgh also just missed out after finishing ahead of them.

Proctor passed Ryan Fisher to give the NEBT/Simpson Racing UK Bears a 5-3 heat advantage over Edinburgh in their opening heat on a night when the 4-3-2-0 scoring system was employed.

They took maximum points next time out against Glasgow's former Bear James Grieves and track reserve Tom Brown, who came in to replace Shane Parker who was taken away in the ambulance after a first bend crash in his opener.

Workington's Kevin Doolan and Adrian Rymel outgated them, however, and held it there for a maximum heat advantage next time out, leaving the Bears pair needing a big final ride.

In the event it was another 7-2 against them, although Havelock tried valiantly to find a way past Birmingham's Jason Lyons.

The Brummies pair of Lyons and Tomasz Piszcz took only five points from a possible 14 in their opening two races but then finished their programmed rides unbeaten.

Havelock admitted: "It was disappointed to go so close to qualifying for the semi-finals because I thought we were both going pretty well early on.

"When you think about it, every heat is like a heat 15 and it all happens on the first corner." Redcar were the best supported team apart from the Somerset hosts and Havelock said: "It's disappointing for them. It would have been nice to at least get to the semis." Results: Group A: King's Lynn 24, Somerset 20, Scunthorpe 20, Berwick 12, Rye House 10; Group B: Workington 27, Birmingham 19, Edinburgh 17, Redcar 16 (Havelock 10, Proctor 6), Glasgow 11; Semi 1: Birmingham 6, King's Lynn 3; Semi 2: Somerset 7, Workington 2; Final: Birmingham 6, Somerset 3.

LAST night's meeting was the traditional curtain raiser to the biggest speedway weekend of the year, with the British Grand Prix taking place in front of a 50,000 crowd at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium this evening.

Jason Crump currently leads the World Championship standings by 14 points from Russian wonderkid Emil Sayfutdinov - but British hope Chris Harris warmed up with domestic maximums in Poland and the UK.

The second of those was for Coventry at Belle Vue and he said: "It's always easier if you make the starts and I was doing that in most of my races. Hopefully this will set the week up for me."