King’s Lynn’s gating was found to be wanting as they went down to a 54-36 home defeat to Leicester to lose further ground on the ROWE Motor Oil Premiership’s top four.
The PSH Environmental Stars suffered their worst Adrian Flux Arena performance of the season against an in-form Lions side who made it into the first bend with both of their riders on repeated occasions.
There was no stopping Ryan Douglas, who scored a five-ride paid maximum for the visitors, and their captain Max Fricke was also in the major points with paid-16.
For the Stars, the only real highlight was a return to form for Niels-Kristian Iversen, who collected plenty of points from the back, but that aside, it was a tough night.
Stars manager Rob Lyon said: “We tried to beat the weather tonight and we tried really hard to get a good track, but we were comprehensively beaten every which way.
“There was nothing wrong with the track, but obviously the starts were a little different, and as a home team, that sometimes messes with your head a bit.
“It’s not an excuse but we couldn’t change that due to the weather, whereas the away team comes with an open mind and Leicester particularly have a team full of trappers, and they are going well at the moment, as we saw last week.
“We discussed things during our team chat, of course, and our boys were trying different things to get off the start. It wasn’t as if they were just leaving it, but nothing seemed to work until the end when we managed a couple of wins.
“It’s disappointing because we wanted to finish our league matches here with a win on every occasion and we were looking for two points tonight to kickstart that, but it went completely wrong.
“But fair play to Leicester, they are a good outfit and they were deserved winners again.”
Extensive track work was required in the build-up to the meeting after rainfall, although ironically, the start then had to be delayed due to the setting sun.
But it was the Lions who found conditions much more to their liking, and they had the key to the start-line all too often.
Stars did win the first two races with Iversen strongly getting the better of Fricke in Heat 1 whilst guest Tobias Thomsen did a fine job with a Heat 2 win over Drew Kemp.
Leicester edged ahead as Douglas took his first win in Heat 3 whilst Kyle Howarth squeezed inside Richard Lawson on turn four, but skipper Nicolai Klindt won Heat 4 and Luke Harrison was agonisingly close to snatching third place from Sam Masters.
At that stage, Lynn looked to be in reasonable shape, but the Lions struck a big 5-1 from Douglas and Fricke over Lawson and Harris in Heat 5, and the writing was on the wall with regards to gating from that point on.
Iversen rode superbly to go from third to first in Heat 6 as a Leicester 5-1 turned into a Lynn 4-2, but the visitors did bank the maximum again in the next courtesy of Howarth and Douglas over Klindt.
The next two races also saw the Lions gate on 5-1, with Iversen passing Joe Thompson on the back straight of Heat 8 and Lawson moving inside Drew Kemp on turn four in Heat 9, but race wins for the visitors in those heats put them 33-21 up.
They added another 4-2 in Heat 10 and then took the match totally away from the Stars with Masters and Fricke dominating from the start in Heat 11, and Kemp then defied the efforts of Lawson in the next to join Douglas for another 5-1.
Leicester were romping clear with a 22-point lead but thankfully Jan Kvech put a win on the board in Heat 13 over Fricke and Masters, and there was a consolation 5-1 from Lawson and Thomsen in the next before Fricke won a shared final race.
Stars now have a clear week before home and away matches against bottom club Birmingham, starting with the trip to Perry Barr next Monday.
King’s Lynn 36: Niels-Kristian Iversen 10, Richard Lawson 8+1, Tobias Thomsen 6+1, Jan Kvech 6, Nicolai Klindt 4, Chris Harris 2, Luke Harrison 0.
Leicester 54: Max Fricke 14+2, Ryan Douglas 14+1, Sam Masters 8+2, Kyle Howarth 7+1, Drew Kemp 7+1, Joe Thompson 4+1, Luke Becker r/r.
Leicester win the aggregate point
