THE Championship title race has been thrown into late season confusion following the abandonment of the outstanding semi-final between Lakeside and Peterborough at Rye House on Sunday.
The Hammers, who won the first leg at Peterborough by 46-44, seemingly had one foot in the Grand Final when they led the Panthers by 34-14 after eight races of the return encounter. But then a floodlight failure at the Hoddesdon Stadium forced referee Dave Robinson to call a halt to proceedings on the grounds of rider safety, two races short of the requirement for a result to be declared, but with Lakeside leading by 22 points on aggregate. Peterborough co-promoter Ged Rathbone said: "We fully expect the meeting to be re-staged although we can't say when at the moment. The rulebook is very clear on that, as the result wasn't mathematically certain."¨ "We will be prepared to return to Rye House on whatever night they can offer us, and if there are no available dates at Hoddesdon then we would speak to the Showground to see if they could accommodate a re-staging there."¨ "We sympathise with the position Lakeside were left in, but at the end of the day it's not Peterborough's fault that the meeting couldn't be completed, and we weren't mathematically out of it."¨ "Yes, it's true that things weren't looking good, although I will say that we had made massive changes to all of our bikes and what we were seeing in Heat 9 from (Nico) Covatti and (Carl) Wilkinson before it was stopped twice was more encouraging."¨ "So whilst we all know it's late in the season and there is a fixture pile-up, that's not down to us and we expect to come back and do it all again, which is what the rules clearly state."¨ "I'd also like to thank all of the Peterborough, Lakeside and Rye House fans for their patience. "¨ "Everyone tried hard to find the solution to the problem but this was a major fault, there were 12 floodlights out, and as Richard Lawson said the bikes are very fast and rider safety is paramount."¨ "From our perspective we weren't pushing for an abandonment - there were no games from us. We were hoping for a resumption and we were happy to carry on if the problems could be solved "“ sadly they couldn't, so we go again.""¨ In a statement, the Lakeside club said: "Lakeside Hammers firstly express their sincere apologies to all the fans who were affected by Sunday's floodlight failure. As notified to the BSPA last week, we only have two days left available to us from the stadium owners, being next Saturday and Sunday, to complete the season. We therefore will leave the decision in the hands of the BSPA and SCB in how to conclude the play-off season."