Adelaide summer speedway seasons starts this weekend
Gillman Media 3 November 2025
The new Adelaide summer Speedway season starts at Gillman Speedway this week (Saturday, 8 November) with the first of twelve meetings planned for the next five months.
The opening meeting sees strong numbers nominated across all classes (see the Nominations page of the Gillman website) and they’ll be keen to return to racing, and also to impress with a view of earning a berth in the Safe Fire & Electrical Gillman track championships scheduled for the second meeting on 22 November.
With a high-profile Solo meeting scheduled interstate on 6 December the third meeting will be the $2000 to win Paintmaster SA Sidecar Spectacular, before the major Solo events at the end of December/beginning of January, with three blockbuster meetings over two weeks.
The first will be the Ray White Gawler SA 500cc Solo Championship (and the SA 250cc Solo Championship) on Sunday night, 28 December which will include at least four overseas riders. Already confirmed are seven times British Champion, and former Speedway Grand Prix rider, Scott Nicholls, fellow British riders Leon Flint and Luke Harrison (who won the British Under 19 championship only three weeks ago) and Luke Becker, the leading USA rider in the British and Polish League racing.
On Friday, 9 January the best Australian riders will fight for the right to be Australia #1 for 2026, in the CBS Bins Final Round of the Australian Solo Championship, and two nights later, Sunday, 11 January, Nicholls, Flint, Harrison and Becker will be back to contest the CBS Bins FIM Oceania Solo Championship.
Both the Australian and Oceania Championships are qualifying rounds for the Australian riders to go into the European qualifying rounds of the Speedway Grand Prix, and it was through the Oceania Championship that Brady Kurtz took his first steps along the path of qualifying for the SGP, and which led to him finishing as second in the world this year, just one point behind the winner Bartosz Zmarzlik.
Anyone thinking of spending the early post-Christmas period in Adelaide for these events can also take in the South Australian Under 16 125cc Solo Championship at the nearby Sidewinders Junior Speedway on Thursday night 8 January.
Following the Oceania Championship the emphasis will switch to the Sidecars, although some meetings may also double with additional Solo features if the riders are still available before returning overseas.
The feature events are the Jim Irwin Sidecar Spectacular (24 January), Bowes Family Sidecar Cup (7 February), the Ray White Gawler South Australian Sidecar Championship (21 February), Marker Brothers Sidecar Cup (7 March), Bob White Sidecar Cup (21 March) and the season finale, the Ray White Gawler FIM Oceania Speedway Sidecar Championship on 4 April.
There’s also the rained-off Gillman Speedway Classic Championships / David Adams Tribute to be re-scheduled, and while no date is yet confirmed it is looking like 14 February.
All meetings will again be live-streamed, with the link to each meeting appearing in the meeting preview on the Gillman Speedway website.
Fans are also reminded that the nominations for each meeting are updated daily on the Gillman website, under the Nominations tab.
Off track the major change over the winter months has been the addition of a naming-rights sponsor for the Speedway stadium.
The land the combined motocross and speedway facilities are on has traditionally been called Heini Becker Motorsport Park, after the former South Australian politician who helped the then Auto Cycle Union of SA obtain a long-lease on the area to initially build the moto-cross track, but this season the actual Gillman Speedway area of the complex will be known as the “Ray White Gawler” Stadium following an approach from the Gawler branch of the well-known Ray White real estate company.
