Peterborough Panthers 59 Coventry Bees 34 - Elite League BPANTHERS produced easily their best performance of the season so far to crush the Bees live on Sky Sports.

Peterborough Panthers 59 Coventry Bees 34 - Elite League B

PANTHERS produced easily their best performance of the season so far to crush the Bees live on Sky Sports.

The ease in which they did it surprised everyone, but there is no denying the fact that this was comprehensive and stylish victory over a team expected to provide Panthers with another hard encounter.

The track having survived the elements over the previous 48 hours served up some classic racing with the first four race times under 60 seconds and all fractionally outside the track record.

Its hard to pick anyone out as their were several candidates for man of the match but Ales Dryml was a deserved MOM winner from the match sponsors Stanair and he has returned for his second spell at the Showground in 2009 with something to prove, which he did with some style.

Yet another great return from reserve Kenneth Hansen whose confidence showed with two outstanding races but in reality the whole team rose to the occasion and Sky surely cannot have failed to have been impressed with the fare on the night.

Panthers set their stall out very early on with emphatic maximums in the first 2 heats and although the Bees reduced that lead with a 5-1 of their own in heat 3 that was as close as they ever got as the Panthers turned up the heat.

Chris Harris made a good start to lead heat 4 but he was immediately passed by both Kenneth Bjerre and Kenneth Hansen and Harris did well to split the home pairing in the end.

Scott Nicholls pointless in his first ride made a good gate in the 5th but Korneliussen blasted by him on the back straight and most of the interest after that was watching Filip Sitera keep out Bager at the back for the entire race.

The Bees pairing Kennett and Schlein repeated their earlier race 3 effort to jump out ahead of Bjerre in heat 7 and for all intents and purposes it looked like staying that way despite Bjerre chasing hard, but Kennett went wide on the last bend with Bjerre switching carefully inside him and snatching second place on the line.

Heat 8 was restarted with Panthers on a 5-1 after Hansen had moved prior to the start, but it didn't matter as Dryml and Hansen just repeated their impressive starts in the rerun and the resulting 5-1 put the match into the tactical arena.

Harris donned the black and white in the 9th with team manager Wayne Swales pitching ace reserve Hansen into the fray in place of Bager.

Korneliussen produced a classic manoeuvre on the first bend to grab the lead and was finally joined up front by Hansen who got the better of Harris following several swaps of position over the first couple of laps.

Iversen and Bjerre anchored the Panthers advantage with race wins apiece in heats 10 and 11 enabling Panthers to increase their lead overall to 18 points, and then Hansen was at it again in 12 as he produced another superb ride to get the better of Edward Kennett and join Korneliussen for yet another maximum.

Bjerre and Iversen repeated that with another 5-1 over Harris and Nicholls in heat 13, whilst Coventry finished off the last of their cards by nominating Schlein for a tactical in heat 14.

Although clearly futile, his race win did shed some respectability to the final score line and it must be said that Schlein would have finished heat 15 in second place but for an engine failure as he completed the last bend.

As it is, a Bee's 4-2 turned into a Panthers one and they finished the match off with their highest win to date this season.

Only Henning Bager failed record at least one paid win and the home side recorded 12 out of the 15 heat winners, on a night that clearly belonged to the Panthers.