Vince

I'd hate to see them allowing rolling and tape touching again, led to more one sided racing than anything else in the sport and huge frustration on the part of the fans if my memories of the times are anything like accurate. The current way is not 100% perfect and when a rider gets a perfect start and is recalled it's as frustrating as the old 'flyer' however it happens a lot less often.

I'm guessing it because if your helmet touches the tapes you didn't necessarily jump the start, not the case if the bike does.

No, for some reason I seemed to remember Iwade having trouble with a neighbour and restrictions being put in place but more than likely got it wrong.

Of course one of the problems with a serious concussion is that you often don't realise that you have one or that it's still causing you problems. Then you start to lose confidence so try harder, do worse and lose more confidence. Before long it seems an impossible to get out of downward spiral so the temptation is to think your career over. Suddenly after some time out the concussion goes and you start to feel better, have a spin on a bike and it feels like old times and only then do you realise how much the concussion was to blame. No idea if this is what happened to James but it's a possibility and could explain why such a talented rider started to struggle. To my mind there is no doubt that he is/was one of the most talented British riders of his generation. Doubtful he was ever proud to ride with concussion but one thing you can be sure of is that if he hadn't there would have been fans of his team very critical of his ability to get over injuries fast.

Isn't Iwade pretty restricted to the times it can run?

The Distance - Cake. I forgot the music, generally poor, I am an old fart but even I think the music is soporific. Don't stop me now - really?? Riders having dust ups gets a big thumbs up from me, can turn a non event into a meeting that is talked about for years. One proviso however is that riders can scrap with riders but if anybody else throws a punch at a rider they should never be allowed trackside again. Mechanics and track staff can all fight each other as far as I am concerned but nobody except a fellow rider should be allowed to hit a rider. On the same sort of subject fines should be x number of points not a fixed sum, a £300 fine for a NL rider is two maximums while for an EL rider it could be a second place - that's not justice. Ref's can have a huge part to play in running good, enjoyable meetings they need to use common sense to make that happen.

It is easy to have razzamataz for one off meetings but whatever you do in that vein will very quickly become boring if seen week in and week out. I do think a good, enthusiastic announcer / commentator is a must and things like rider introductions could be improved at a lot of tracks without going over the top. I know that a lot of tracks want to keep people on site for a good amount of time in order to take some more money off them via the food and drink outlets but would much prefer that the meeting was run at a quick pace with a long but filled interval rather than drag the meeting out. I struggle to think of any reason why apart from injury that it should take more than an hour to run 15 heats of Speedway. The interval could be fairly easily and cheaply filled with something like the local Trials club putting on a demo trial with an made obstacles. Something that could only work at some tracks which I think would be an excellent time filler would be to have a cycle Speedway track on the centre green and run their heats between the motorcycle version. In the interval you could run some kids races which would get them along. You can't underestimate the importance of giving the kids something to do each week. At Weymouth they used to have a running race around the track and there several kids who dragged their parents along so they could take part in that and eventually the parents went to watch the Speedway. Again for kids you could have lucky tickets with small prizes. You could do the same with adults with one of the prizes being the chance to watch a race from the centre green (something every Speedway fan should do at least once). The best thing of all would be to have well prepared tracks and a short practice session before the meeting so that both teams started the meeting with well set up bikes. At the end of the day if the racing is good fans will go home a lot happier.

Sponsors names aren't a lot of good on the back of the rider, how often do you see photo's of a riders back?

I think Scunthorpe have their attitude exactly right but can't help a wry smile when I remember Rob Godfrey's criticism of Newport's CL team being to weak after they were whitewashed at Scunthorpe when Newport were a second team and Scunthorpe a stand alone. To be fair a the time he was a new Promoter and from what I've seen his attitude has changed very much for the better since in many ways. Going to one of the amateur meetings at Scunthorpe is an eye opener for anybody like myself who believed that there wasn't enough interest in kids getting into Speedway. The sport is absolutely thriving there so proves that if the opportunity is there to get on a bike on a regular basis kids will jump at it. Knowing the chance is there to move all the way through the leagues can only increase interest more and Scunthorpe has to be one of the most positive things happening in British Speedway. To those who say they won't go to watch them ride I say you're the one's missing out, they might lose but they won't wobble around miles off the pace and the chance to see kids improve year on year shouldn't be missed.

I don't think that having all the top riders in the Elite league would make very much difference to crowd levels at all. People who like Speedway already go to meetings, if they don't it's because of the cost, distance, illness or whatever. I can't imagine that there are many who don't go just because some of the top riders don't appear here. People who aren't interested in Speedway don't know who the top riders are so it won't encourage newcomers along.

I started watching Speedway in either 67 or 68 and despite already spending every weekend watching motorcycle sport I fell in love with Speedway immediately. However I am entirely convinced that the Speedway I have seen in the past 10 years is a much better spectacle. Apart from crowd levels I would take Speedway today over the 60's and 70's every time.

I can only apologise for being so stupid and having the lack of understanding in depth of Polish Speedway that you do being an insider. How it escaped my attention that the pairs and European Championships combine to make a total of just over half the meetings of the GP series I have no idea. I can now see how the Pairs event you mentioned would need the same input as a full GP series. I can only thank you for enlightening me. But you're still only guessing

No not for certain, we know he is owed a considerable sum of money and he has said finances are a problem at the moment. Knowing he is riding for a team owned by the person running a series alongside the World Championships isn't the same as knowing that he has had pressure put on him not to compete either. In fact I would have thought having the riders at the top of the World Championship chase riding for your club and in your individual series would be beneficial to the gates. Racing in a one off event or even a small series can't be compared to the investment needed to compete in a World Championship GP series so it's irrelevant whether he does or not. The only thing we do know for sure is that you are guessing just as much as I am.

Possibly but countered easily by the idea that one rider is toward the end of his career and looked totally uninterested during some GP's last year while the other is known to be in financial difficulties and returning from injury. The truth is that we'll probably never know and will all have our own opinion, mine is that it's a conspiracy theory and that Emil will one day be World Champion.

Possibly he was still hopeful of getting what he was owed or had a potential sponsor that didn't work out. Personally I think this is one of those conspiracy theories that has just enough background to seem plausible but has no real evidence behind it.

I might be guilty of stating the obvious but when you go into the bends don't you lean over which moves the footrest away from the fence and then you slide as well which means the back wheel would touch the fence long before anything else?

Perhaps Sayfutdinov just plain can't afford to commit to running a full GP season at the level he needs to in order to have a chance of winning. It's a big chunk of money that he has been let down on as well as last years injuries hitting his earnings very hard. Possibly he sees a year out to rebuild his finances as his best option for becoming World Champion.

How I hope you one day get a neighbour who makes a din at 3am just a few times a year. The people who are complaining are in the wrong but you are doing a very good job of making them seem like the sensible one's.

Glen Phillips, really sound bloke who will see you right. http://www.gpmouldings.co.uk/index.html

Whatever the rights and wrongs you have to wonder if the judges verdict might have been more favourable had there been no noise during the middle of the night!

I work permanent nights and would never expect anybody to be quiet during the daytime because of it. However if my neighbours had thought it fine to play loud music at 3am when my kids were little they would have found out that I really don't think that is reasonable. The majority of people still sleep at night and in my opinion have the right to some peace, drinking establishments and supermarkets are well known to be open at unsocial hours so people could be expected to know that in advance. Moving in to an area near a motorsports venue it would be reasonable to assume that midnight to 6am at least the site would be quiet. If I think like that having been a motorsports fan all my life then it seems sure that noise at 3am would seem twice as bad to somebody with no interest. All the time we want to indulge in noisy pastimes we need to accept that others will hate the noise and have to be seen to take all possible steps to behave responsibly and with regard to their interest. Do that and we have an argument, bury our heads in the sand and carry on doing whatever suits us and we are as bad as them and will lose it all.

I have been around motorcycle sport for all of my 52 years and if I bought a house near to a track I would be genuinely shocked if they were still making noise at 3am. While I personally wouldn't care it would be reasonable expect the hours of midnight to 6am to be quiet I would have thought. It would be like having a next door neighbour who worked shifts and played the drums, it would probably suit him to practice at 3am after finishing at 2 but in that instance I would care very much! We cant afford to fall into the trap of believing that allowances should be made because it's something we personally like. You have to ask yourself if the noise you hate most in the world would be acceptable to you for the hours and times you want to run. Hard as it is to believe for some people engine noise is a horrible din :-) I detest nimbyism in all it's forms but the way to defeat it is to prove that what you are doing is reasonable to anybody with a normal attitude, you will only do that by making and being seen to make every effort to minimise nuisance.

Standing up to them for your right to make noise in pursuit of your sport is absolutely the right thing to do. Trying to claim that right to make noise at 3am is absolutely the way to make sure that you never succeed. People will never, ever accept motorsport on their doorstep if we aren't reasonable in doing what we can to minimise the nuisance. Some people will never be happy but the silent majority will turn into keen objectors if you insist on the right to make as much noise as you want whenever you feel like it.

The more detail they get immersed in and the longer they can drag things back and forward without either side being successful the more money they make, exactly opposite to most jobs! Common sense and the law will be strangers for as long as lawyers are allowed to keep it that way.