LOCAL racer Lewis Kerr has returned to King’s Lynn for the remainder of the 2024 season.
His last ROWE Motor Oil Premiership act may have been a match-winning 7+1 AGAINST the Stars, guesting for Leicester on Monday, but the 34-year-old Norfolk racer is back with the club where he has spent the majority of his top-flight career.
It is a timely signing for both parties as Kerr Championship club, Berwick, wrap up their season with home and away clashes against Workington this weekend while the Stars look to ease what has been at times a crippling issue of rider shortage, leading to the postponement of Thursday’s home clash with Belle Vue.
Kerr last rode for the Stars in 2022, switching to Sheffield mid-season, and has since had spells with Leicester and Oxford in the top-flight.
He was dropped by the Spires in June, shortly after returning from a serious ankle injury, and replaced by Berwick team-mate Drew Kemp who only lasted four meetings before he was also axed.
Stars team manager, Rob Lyon, hopes Kerr’s signing and Jan Kvech’s move to number one will end a constant battle to find guests for Tobias Musielak, especially when their options became the 75 per cent “no facility”.
He said: “We’ve tried to book the right guests at the right times to give us every chance of reaching the play-offs. It’s worked on the odd occasion but it hasn’t been particularly successful.
“Mathematically we can still reach the play-offs, but realistically it’s unlikely and we’ve got to the stage where we need to re-declare to get ourselves a more settled team.
“If we could have brought a No.1 in we would have done it a long time ago, but it’s the lack of available top riders which has caused the issue.
“Lewi knows the place well and showed on Monday night what he can do, he was keen to come.
“I look at our team now on paper and it’s actually not that different in structure to how we started the season. It makes us a lot more settled and was something we really needed to do for the final month or so of the season.”
Lynn await fitness reports on Klindt and Benjamin Basso before confirming their team for the trip to Belle Vue in front of the Eurosport cameras on Monday night.
Words by George Dodds.
Images by Taylor Lanning.